Visualizing Household Health by Jennifer Borland Book (Hardcover)

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.