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Book Cover
E-book
Author Borland, Jennifer, author

Title Visualizing Household Health : Medieval Women, Art, and Knowledge in the Régime du corps / Jennifer Borland
Published University Park, PA : Penn State University Press, [2021]
©2022

Copies

Description 1 online resource (240 pages) : 33 color/52 black and white illustrations
Contents Intro -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. The Visual Language of the Régime du corps -- 2. The Illustrated Manuscripts and Their Audiences -- 3. The Medical Context for the Régime du corps -- 4. Household Management, Status, and the Care of the Body -- Conclusion -- Appendix 1: Summary of Illustrated Copies -- Appendix 2: Scenes Depicted in Each Illustrated Copy -- Appendix 3: Known Manuscript Copies of the Régime du corps -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary In 1256, the countess of Provence, Beatrice of Savoy, enlisted her personal physician to create a health handbook to share with her daughters. Written in French and known as the Régime du corps, this health guide would become popular and influential, with nearly seventy surviving copies made over the next two hundred years and translations in at least four other languages. In Visualizing Household Health, art historian Jennifer Borland uses the Régime to show how gender and health care converged within the medieval household.Visualizing Household Health explores the nature of the households portrayed in the Régime and how their members interacted with professionalized medicine. Borland focuses on several illustrated versions of the manuscript that contain historiated initials depicting simple scenes related to health care, such as patients' consultations with physicians, procedures like bloodletting, and foods and beverages recommended for good health. Borland argues that these images provide important details about the nature of women's agency in the home--and offer highly compelling evidence that women enacted multiple types of health care. Additionally, she contends, the Régime opens a window onto the history of medieval women as owners, patrons, and readers of books. Interdisciplinary in scope, this book broadens notions of the medieval medical community and the role of women in medieval health care. It will be welcomed by scholars and students of women's history, art history, book history, and the history of medicine
Notes In English
Online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 10. Jan 2022)
Subject Historiated initials -- Europe -- History -- To 1500
Medical care -- Europe -- History -- To 1500
Medicine, Medieval -- Europe
Women -- Health and hygiene -- Europe -- History -- To 1500
ART -- History -- Medieval.
Historiated initials
Medical care
Medicine, Medieval
Women -- Health and hygiene
Europe
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780271091495
0271091495
0271091487
9780271091488