Tacuinum sanitatis

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Tacuinum sanitatis, Lombardy, late 14th century, (Biblioteca Casanatensis, Rome)

The Tacuinum (sometimes Taccuinum) Sanitatis is a medieval handbook on wellness, based on the Taqwin al‑sihha تقوين الصحة ("Tables 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.

The terse paragraphs of the treatise were freely translated into Latin in mid-thirteenth-century Palermo or Naples,^[3] where it continued an Italo-Norman tradition as one of the prime sites for peaceable inter-cultural contact between the Islamic and European worlds.

Three handsomely illustrated complete late fourteenth-century manuscripts of the Taccuinum, all produced in Lombardy, survive, in Vienna, Paris and Rome, as well as scattered illustrations from others, as well as fifteenth-century codices.^[4] Unillustrated manuscripts present a series of tables, with a narrative commentary on the facing pages. The Taccuinum was first printed in 1531.

Harvesting garlic, from Tacuinum sanitatis, ca. 1400 (Bibliothèque nationale, Paris)

The Tacuinum was very popular in Western Europe in the Late Middle Ages; an indication of that popularity is the use of the word taccuino in modern Italian to mean any kind of pocket handbook, guide, notebook.

In addition to its importance for the study of medieval medicine, the Tacuinum is also of interest in the study of agriculture and cooking; for example, the earliest identifiable image of the carrot — a modern plant — is found in it.

Notes

^ E. Wickersheimer, "Les Tacuini Sanitatis et leur traduction allemande par Michel Herr", Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 12 1950:85-97.
^ Brucia Witthoft, 'The Tacuinum Sanitatis: A Lombard Panorama" Gesta 17.1 (1978:49-60) p 50.
^ "Magister Faragius" (Ferraguth) in Naples took responsibility for one translation into Latin, in a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, MS Lat. 15362 (noted by Witthoft 1978:58 note 9).
^ Witthoft 1978 discusses the Tacuina in the national libraries of Paris and Vienna, and the Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome.