Custom Clothes: Tacuinum Sanitatis

Saturday 15 September 2012

Tacuinum Sanitatis

The Tacuinum (sometimes Taccuinum) Sanitatis is a medieval handbook on health and wellbeing, based on the Taqwim al‑sihha تقويم الصحة ("Maintenance of Health"), an eleventh-century Arab medical treatise by Ibn Butlan of Baghdad.[1] Aimed at a cultured lay audience, the text exists in several variant Latin versions, the manuscripts of which are characteristically so profusely illustrated that one student called the Taccuinum "a trecento picture book," only "nominally a medical text".[2] Though describing in detail the beneficial and harmful properties of foods and plants, it is far more than a herbal: listing its contents organically rather than alphabetically, it sets forth the six essential elements for well-being:sufficient food and drink in moderation,fresh air,alternations of activity and rest,alternations of sleep and wakefulness,

secretions and excretions of humours, and finally the effects of states of mind.

Illnesses result from imbalance of these elements, therefore a healthy life is lived in harmony.