What is Tacuinum Sanitatis?

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; it exists in several variant Latin versions, the manuscripts of which are profusely illustrated. Though describing in detail the beneficial and harmful properties of foods and plants, it is far more than a herbal. 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 treatise translated into Latin in mid-thirteenth-century Palermo, where it continued an Italo-Norman tradition as one of the prime sites for peaceable inter-cultural contact between the Islamic and European worlds

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.

External links

• Samples of 2 manuscripts (Italy, 14th century; Venice, 1490)
• Samples of 4 manuscripts (Parisinum, Vindobonense, Casanatense, Rothomagense: all of the late 14th and early 15th centuries)
• Introductory text and some illustrations
• Tacuinum Sanitatis described