<span class='italic'>John Mirfield’s</span> Gouernayl of Helþe

doi:10.1017/9781009105347.004

Chapter 3 - John Mirfield’s Gouernayl of Helþe

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2022

Edited by

Jeremy J. Smith and

Irma Taavitsainen: Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
Turo Hiltunen: Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
Jeremy J. Smith: Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
Carla Suhr: Affiliation:
University of Helsinki

Book contents

Get access

Summary

A version of John Mirfield’s Gouernayl of Helþe found in Wellcome Collection MS 674 demonstrates the continuing relevance and adaptability of medieval regimens to post-medieval contexts. First composed in the late fourteenth century, Mirfield’s work was among the earliest medical texts printed in late fifteenth-century England. It then reappeared, considerably revised, in a late sixteenth-century manuscript. This chapter traces the substantive changes made to Mirfield’s medieval regimen over time to understand which aspects of health culture were identified as needing revision, notably in terms of the non-naturals, and what was regarded as harmful or beneficial to health.

Keywords

regimen of health non-naturals John Mirfield health culture knowledge adaptation early modern medical manuscripts material fluidity

Type: Chapter
Information: Genre in English Medical Writing, 1500–1820
Sociocultural Contexts of Production and Use
, pp. 32 - 51

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009105347.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Primary Sources

London, British Library, Additional MS 29301.Google Scholar

London, Wellcome Collection MS 674.Google Scholar

[No author]. 1489–90. The Governayle of Helth. London: William Caxton.Google Scholar

Bacon, Francis. 1598. Of Regiment of Health. London: John Windet.Google Scholar

Boorde, Andrew. 1547. Compendyous Regyment or Dyetary of Helth. London: William Powell.Google Scholar

Bullein, William. 1558. Gouernment of Health. London: John Day.Google Scholar

Cogan, Thomas. 1584. Haven of Health. London: Henry Midleton.Google Scholar

Elyot, Thomas. 1539. Castel of Helth. London: Thomas Berthelet.Google Scholar

Harington, John. 1607. The Englishmans Docter. Or, The Schoole of Salerne. London: William Jaggard.Google Scholar

Paynel, Thomas. 1528. Regimen sanitatis Salerni. London: Thomas Berthelet.Google Scholar

Phayer, Thomas. 1543. Regiment of Lyfe. London: Edward Whytchurch.Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

Adamson, Melitta Weiss. 2004. Baby-food in the middle ages. In Hosking, Richard (ed.), Nurture: Proceedings of the Oxford symposium on food and cookery 2003, 1–11. Bristol: Footwork.Google Scholar

Adamson, Melitta. 2010. Bernard de Gordon and Arnald de Villanova: A tale of two regimes. In Speer, Andreas & Wirmer, David (eds.), 1308: Eine Topographie historischer Gleichzeitigkeit, 419–35. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar

Barnett, Eleanor. 2020. Reforming food and eating in Protestant England, c.1540–c.1640. Historical Journal 63(3): 507–27.Google Scholar

Blades, William. 1858. The gouernayle of helthe: With the medecyne of ye stomacke. Reprinted from Caxton’s editio, (circa m.cccc.xci), with introductory remarks and notes. London: Blades, East, & Blades.Google Scholar

Cavallo, Sandra. 2016. Health, air and material culture in the early modern Italian domestic environment. Social History of Medicine 29(4): 694–716.CrossRef Google Scholar

Cavallo, Sandra, & Storey, Tessa. 2013. Healthy living in late renaissance Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Cavallo, Sandra, & Storey, Tessa (eds.). 2017a. Conserving health in early modern culture: Bodies and environments in Italy and England. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar

Cavallo, Sandra & Storey, Tessa. 2017b. Regimens, authors and readers: Italy and England compared. In Cavallo, Sandra, & Storey, Tessa (eds.), Conserving health in early modern culture: Bodies and environments in Italy and England, 23–52. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar

Demaitre, Luke E. 1980. Doctor Bernard de Gordon: Professor and practitioner. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.Google Scholar

eVK2. 2019. An expanded and revised version of Voigts, Linda Ehrsam and Kurtz, Patricia Deery, Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar

Fissell, Mary. 2011. Popular medical writing. In Raymond, Joad (ed.), Oxford history of popular print culture, vol. 1, 418–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Getz, Faye. 1985. John Mirfield and the Breviarium Bartholomei: The medical writings of a clerk at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in the later fourteenth century. Society for the Social History of Medicine Bulletin 37: 24–6.Google Scholar

Getz, Faye. 2010. Healing and society in medieval England: A Middle English translation of the pharmaceutical writings of Gilbertus Anglicus. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar

Gil-Sotres, Pedro. 1998. The regimens of health. In Grmek, Mirko D. (ed.), Antony Shugaar (trans.), Western medical thought from antiquity to the middle ages, 291–318. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar

Hardingham, Glenn James. 2005. The regimen in late medieval England. PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar

Hartley, Sir Percival Horton-Smith, & Aldridge, Harold Richard (eds.). 1936. Johannes de Mirfield of St Bartholomew’s, Smithfield: His life and work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Honkapohja, Alpo. 2017. Alchemy, medicine, and commercial book production: A codicological and linguistic study of the Sloane manuscript group. Turnhout: Brepols.Google Scholar

Jones, Lori. 2016. The diseased landscape: Medieval and early modern plaguescapes. Landscapes 17(2): 108–23.Google Scholar

Jones, Lori. 2018. Unrecorded versions of John of Burgundy’s plague tract and identifying ‘lost’ copies of the same. Notes and Queries 65(1): 14–17.Google Scholar

Jones, Lori. 2021. Itineraries and transformations: John of Burgundy’s Plague Treatise. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 95(2): 277–314.Google Scholar

Jones, Lori. 2022. Patterns of plague: Changing ideas of plague in England and France, 1348–1750. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.Google Scholar

Jones, Peter Murray. 1995. Reading medicine in Tudor Cambridge. In Nutton, Vivian & Porter, Roy (eds.), The history of medical education in Britain, 153–83. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar

Keiser, George R. 2003. Two medieval plague treatises and their afterlife in early modern England. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 58(3): 292–324.Google Scholar

Kiernander, A. R. D. 1980. The Governal of health. PhD dissertation, University of Auckland.Google Scholar

Leong, Elaine. 2018. Recipes and everyday knowledge: Medicine, science and the household in early modern England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Newton, Hannah. 2017. ‘She sleeps well and eats an egg’: Convalescent care in early modern England. In Cavallo, Sandra & Storey, Tessa (eds.), Conserving health in early modern culture: Bodies and environments in Italy and England, 104–32. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar

Nicoud, Marilyn. 2007. Les régimes de santé au Moyen Âge. Rome: Publications de l’École française de Rome.CrossRef Google Scholar

Slack, Paul. 1979. Mirrors of health and treasure of poor men: The uses of the vernacular medical literature of Tudor England. In Webster, Charles (ed.), Health, medicine and mortality in the sixteenth century, 237–74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Slack, Paul. 1985. The impact of plague in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar

Storey, Tessa. 2017. English and Italian health advice: Protestant and Catholic bodies. In Cavallo, Sandra & Storey, Tessa (eds.), Conserving health in early modern culture: Bodies and environments in Italy and England, 210–34. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar

Taavitsainen, Irma. 2006. Medical discourse: Early genres, 14th and 15th centuries. In Brown, Keith (ed.), The encyclopedia of language & linguistics, 2nd ed., 688–94. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar

Thirsk, Joan. 2006. Food in early modern England: Phases, fads, fashions, 1500–1760. London: Hambledon Continuum.Google Scholar

Walsham, Alexandra. 2011. The reformation of the landscape: Religion, identity and memory in early modern Britain and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Wear, Andrew. 2000. Knowledge and practice in English medicine, 1550–1680. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Wear, Andrew. 2008. Place, health, and disease: The Airs, waters, places tradition in early modern England and North America. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 38(3): 443–65.Google Scholar

Weiss-Amer, Melitta. 1993. Medieval women’s guides to food during pregnancy: Origins, texts, and traditions. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 10(1): 5–23.Google Scholar

Yoshikawa, Naoë Kukita. 2013. The translation of the Regimen Sanitatis into a handbook for the devout laity: A new look at the Kalender of Shepherds and its context. In Petrina, Alessandra (ed.), The Medieval translator / Traduire au Moyen Age: In principio fuit interpres, 303–15. Turnhout: Brepols.Google Scholar