Rules of Health: diet, exercise, and body weight in Britain, 1670-1830

Abstract

Health advice concerning diet, exercise and body weight has been distributed and sought out throughout the eighteenth century. Drawing upon texts which discuss these three topics, this thesis combines close textual analysis with a careful examination of eighteenth-century medical theories and concepts in order to demonstrate that the advice concerning diet, exercise and body weight found in these texts is the result of the coming together of a set of theories unique to this period. Though all three of these topics were extensively discussed in the eighteenth-century medical circles, they have not all received equal attention from historians. Moreover, a close examination of how the subjects of diet, exercise and body weight were connected in eighteenth-century discussions has hitherto not been undertaken, despite the fact that in our modern society these three topics are considered to be intrinsically linked. Within the topics of diet, exercise and body weight, sources dating from the period 1680-1780 stand out as evidence of significant developments. These dates coincide with the rise and fall in popularity of iatromechanism as a school of thought in the field of medicine. It is the contention of this thesis that iatromechanism had a particularly significant effect on health advice, especially relating to the topics of diet, exercise, and body weight. Advice from this period started to reflect the iatromechanists’ conceptualisation of the body as an intricate network of vessels containing and propelling forth fluids. This is evident in mechanists’ focus on consistency and digestibility of food, their increased attention on exercise as a strengthening effect on these vessels, and the increased focus on quantitative methods for measuring health and the body. As such, it is the contention of this thesis argues that the iatromechanical school of thought had a significant effect on eighteenth-century health advice.