Das Büchlein der Gesundheit: A 15th-Century Bavarian Compendium of Preventive Medicine. Edited from Trieste, Biblioteca Civica Attilio Hortis, MS 2–25 by Claire V. Fennell. English and Beyond, 15. Munich: utzverlag, 2025, lxxx, 137 pp., 1 plate

Medieval medicine was very much based on ancient teachings (Galen), and when we consider what some of the medical authorities in the late Middle Ages had to say about the best ways to maintain health or how to recover one’s health, we might be rather surprised about the in-depth understanding of the human nature, and the close interrelationship between foodstuffs and people’s health. There were many medical regimens, all of them closely interconnected with each other through copying, translating, adapting, and imitating. One intriguing example is the fifteenth-century Büchlein der Gesundheit still extant in four manuscripts, one of which held today in the Biblioteca Civica Attilio Hortis in Triest.