How to stay healthy in the Middle Ages

Did medieval people really think about trying to live healthily? Didn't they all just die young? Well, according to Catherine Harvey, that's not quite the case. Speaking to Charlotte Vosper in this episode of the History Extra podcast, Catherine discusses her latest book, The Medieval Guide to Healthy Living, revealing the practical and somewhat surprising ways in which medieval individuals thought about exercise, well-being and food.

And if you want to learn even more about the surprising stories of some of history's most remarkable delicacies, don't miss our new series, History's Greatest Dishes, which launches on the 13th of April. You can find more details about that in the description to this episode, but for now it's over to Catherine and Charlotte. Your book is about the ways in which medieval people tried to live healthy lives. But before we can dive into the ways in which people tried to stay healthy, I think we need to establish the medical context in which medieval people were operating. So how were bodies understood in the medieval period?

So medieval people have really quite different ideas about how bodies work. to us. And that's because they believe in what's called the humoral system, which means that health is basically based on the equilibrium of four bodily fluids. And they are blood and phlegm and black bile and yellow bile. And they all have different properties in terms of being hot or cold or wet or dry.

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