DANCE AND HEALTH: THE RENAISSANCE PHYSICIANS' VIEW

Dance Research

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 3-30

  Arcangeli, Alessandro ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 85126611393     PISSN: 02642875     EISSN: 17500095     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3366/1291009     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. A recent volume - Peregrine Horden (ed.), Music as Medicine: The history of music therapy since antiquity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) - has devoted a three-essay section to tarantism, the southern Italian malaise which was believed to be caused by the sting of a spider, and healed through prolonged dancing sessions; together with St Vitus's dance - to which it was often related - this was, especially from the late fifteenth century, the most frequently discussed form of 'dancing mania'.
2. The focus on the healthy population can be evident from titles such as A. Porchon, Les regles de la santé, ou le regime de vivre des sains (Paris: chez Maurice Villery, 1684). For an early seventeenth-century case of radical attack on hygiene, as irrelevant to medicine because he who is in good health does not need the help of a doctor, see Heikki Mikkeli, Hygiene in the early modern medical tradition (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 1999), pp. 101-8.
3. This was the most common title for a treatise on the subject, a genre inaugurated by a work in six books written by Galen, which was to become newly available in Europe in both Latin and vernacular translations from the early sixteenth century. For the Greek text see Claudius Galenus, De sanitate tuenda, ed. by K. Koch (Leipzig: Corpus medicorum Graecorum 5.4.2, 1923); Latin trans. in Claudius Galenus, Opera omnia, ed. by Carl Gottlob Kühn (Leipzig, 1821-1833; reprint Hildesheim, 1964-1965), 6, pp. 1-452. On the subject: Ludwig Edelstein, 'The Dietetics of Antiquity' (1931), Engl. trans. in Id., Ancient Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), pp. 303-16.
4. For a general introduction to the period from 1500 to 1800, see Mary Lindemann, Medicine and society in early modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1999); more specifically on dietetics, Mikkeli, Hygiene in the early modern medical tradition. Both volumes include a description of the classical foundations of Western medical theory and practice.
5. On play and games as forms of physical exercise see Alessandro Arcangeli, 'Play and health in medical literature', De zeventiende eeuw, 15 (1999), pp. 1-11.
6. Johannes Matthaeus, Speculum sanitatis (Herborn, 1620), pp. 138-9; Thomas Elyot, The castell of helthe (London: in aedibus Thomae Bertheleti, 1539), fol. 50v.
7. Hieronymus Cardanus, Opus novum cunctis de sanitate tuenda, ac vita producenda (Rome: apud Franciscum Zanettum, 1580), pp. 54-70; on his side stood Bartolomeo Paschetti, Del conservare la sanità et del vivere de' Genovesi libri tre (Genua: appresso Giuseppe Pavoni, 1602), pp. 160-5. On the Renaissance quest for longevity: Mikkeli, Hygiene in the early modern medical tradition, pp. 73-92.
8. Hieronymus Montuus, De activa medicinae scientia commentari duo (Lyons: apud Joan. Tornaesium et Gul. Gazeium, 1557), p. 130; Matthaeus, Speculum sanitatis, p. 143.
9. Cf. Claudius Galenus, 'De parvae pilae exercitio', in: Opera omnia, ed. K. Koch, 5 (Leipzig, 1823), pp. 899-910; Adolfo Noto, 'La ginnastica igiene dell'anima: Galeno e "il giuoco della piccola palla" ', Lancillotto e Nausica, 1.1 (1984), pp. 56-61; Galen, 'The exercise with the small ball', in Id., Selected works, trans. with an introduction and notes by P. N. Singer (Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 299-304.
10. R. a Fonseca, De tuenda valetudine, et producenda vita liber (Florence: apud Bartholomaeum Sermartellium Jr., 1602), p. 15.
11. For the text and its history, see H. Elkhadem, Le Taqwim al-Sihha (Tacuini Sanitatis) d'Ibn Butlan: un traité médical du XI e siècle (Louvain: Peeters, 1990). For the illuminated manuscripts: Luigi Serra (ed.), Theatrum Sanitatis. Codice 4182 della R. Biblioteca Casanatense (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1940); Tacuinum sanitatis in medicina. Codex Vindobonensis series nova 2644 der Österreichischen Nationalbiliothek, reprint ed. by Franz Unterkircher, English trans. of texts by Heide Saxer and Charles H. Talbot (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1967; quotation from p. 136); Carmélia Opsomer, L'art de vivre en santé: images et recettes du Moyen Age. Le Tacuinum Sanitatis (manuscrit 1041) de la Bibliothèque de l'Université de Liège (Liège: Perron, 1991), p. 154. Another sketched illustration dating from about 1500 (fig. 4) shows two male and two female dancers arranged in couples; cf. Tacuinum sanitatis. Vollständige Faksimileaus -gabe im Originalformat des Codex 2396 der Osterreichischen Nationalbibliothek, with explanatory notes by Joachim Rössl and Heinrich Konrad (Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1984), no. 261: 'Sonare et saltare'. The same family manuscripts include further illumi -nations on singing and music making. In a section of the text which was dropped in its Latin adaptation, Ibn Butlan added: 'Dance is practiced either with musical accom paniment or without it. The dancer must be merry, while improving his temperament and his art, wellproportioned in his body and size' (my translation from the French text given in Elkhadem, Le Taqwim al-Sihha, p. 211).
12. See for instance Armen Carapetyan, 'Music and medicine in the Renaissance and in the 17th and 18th centuries', in Dorothy M. Schullian and Max Schoen (eds.), Music and medicine (New York: Schuman, 1948), pp. 117-57 (p. 130).
13. Archange Tuccaro, Trois dialogues de l'exercise de sauter, et voltiger en l'air (Paris: chez Claude de Monstr'oeil, 1599; reprint Alburgh, 1987); cf. Michel Binamé, 'La théorie de la gym -nastique et de "l'art de sauter" d'Archange Tuccaro (1536-1604)', in Roland Renson, and others (eds.), The history, the evolution and diffusion of sports and games in different cultures, Proceedings of the 4th International HISPA Seminar. Leuven, Belgium, April 1-5, 1975 (Brussels: BLOSO, 1976), pp. 387-402. William Stokes, The vaulting-master (London, 1641; Oxford, 1652).
14. A dictionary of ancient Greek dance forms was published by Joannes Meursius, Orchestra, sive de saltationibus veterum (Leiden, 1618); see F. G. Naerebout, Attractive performances. Ancient Greek dance: three preliminary studies (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1997), pp. 23-4.
15. Hieronymus Mercurialis, De arte gymnastica libri sex (4th ed.: Venice, 1601; reprint [Turin], 1960, p. 239). Cf. Jacques Ulmann, De la gymnastique aux sports modernes (Paris, 1965), pp. 97-109; P. C. McIntosh, 'Hieronymus Mercurialis' De arte gymnastica: classification and dogma in physical education in the sixteenth century', The British Journal of Sports History, 1 (1984), pp. 73-84; Vivian Nutton, 'Les exercices et la santé: Hieronymus Mercurialis et la gymnastique médicale', in J. Céard, M.-M. Fontaine and J.-C. Margolin (eds.), Le corps à la Renaissance (Paris, 1990), pp. 295-308. For another example of antiquarian work by a contemporary physician: Laurentius Joubertus, 'De gymnasiis', in: Operum Latinorum tomus secundus (Lyons: apud Stephanum Michaelem, 1582), pp. 255-80.
16. Montuus, De activa medicinae scientia, pp. 130, 133; H. de Monteux, Conservation de santé et prolongation de vie Nouvellement traduit [ ] reveu, corrigé et augmenté (Paris: chez Simon Calvarin, 1572), fols. 122r, 125r-126r (I quote from fol. 126r) (a first edition of the French translation was published in 1559). In the advertising language of its frontispice, it was stressed that the book was also targeting a non-specialist public ('livre fort utile et necessaire non seulement aux medecins, mais aussi à toute personne qui veult avoir la santé corporelle, sans laquelle ceste vie est sans fruit').
17. On the topic see Alessandro Arcangeli, 'Per un'archeologia della storiografia della danza: il racconto delle origini', Ludica, 4 (1998), pp. 97-9.
18. Iosephus Quercetanus, Diaeteticon polyhistoricon (Paris: apud Claudium Morellum, 1606), fols. 155r (hunting), 141r, 144r-149v; Joseph Du Chesne, Le portraict de la santé (Paris: chez Claude Morel, 1606), pp. 321, 294-5, 300-10. Although somehow eclectically, Duchesne was a Paracelsian, rather than a Galenist.
19. Petrus Gontier, Exercitationes hygiasticae, sive de sanitate tuenda, et vita producenda, libri XVIII (Lyons: sumptibus Antonii Jullieron, 1668), pp. 471-96 (quotations from pp. 474-5, 487); for the history of the reception of volta and waltz, see Rémi Hess, La valse: révolution du couple en Europe (Paris: A. M. Métailié, 1989).
20. Michel Bicais, La manière de regler la santé par ce qui nous environne, par ce que nous recevons, et par les exercices, ou par la gymnastique moderne (Aix: chez Charles David, 1669), pp. 280-8.
21. Xenophon, Memorabilia. Oeconomicus, translated by E. C. Marchant; Symposium. Apology, translated by O. J. Todd (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1923, repr. 1997), p. 551: 'You are laughing at me, are you?. Is it because I want to exercise to better my health?. [ ] Or is it because I am eager for such exercises as these [viz. dances], not like the long-distance runners, who develop their legs at the expense of their shoulders, nor like the prize-fighters, who develop their shoulders but become thin-legged, but rather with a view to giving my body a symmetrical development by exercising it in every part?'. Both the options for dance and ball games as the best exercise were quoted by Marsilius Cagnatus, De sanitate tuenda libri duo (Padua: apud Franciscum Bolzettam, 1605), fol. 138r.
22. Bicais, La manière de regler la santé, p. 283 ('la musique et le son font danser l'ame en faisant danser les esprits, c'est à dire en leur donnant une agitation, une cadence et un bransle harmonique, la poësie luy fait cette impression immediatement, jusques à la ravir et la jetter dans l'enthousiasme, et la danse est un effet des mouvemens que l'ame se donne, et avec lesquels elle émeut et elle ébransle le corps en suitte de ceux qu'elle reçoit des tons de la musique, de la poësie et des chansons').
23. The most obvious reference is to Marsilio Ficino, whose path was followed by subsequent generations of philosophers and physicians. Ground-breaking work on Ficino's philosophy of music and on its medical/anthropological implications is collected in Daniel Pickering Walker, Music, spirit and language in the Renaissance, ed. by Penelope Gouk (London: Variorum Reprints, 1985).
24. Bicais, La manière de regler la santé, pp. 284-5 ('On conçoit encore du mesme principe pourquoy la melodie nous fait danser d'une maniere differente suivant ses mesures et ses tons differens, comme par exemple, les tons aigus nous font sauter, nous inspirent une danse fort vîte, au contraire des graves et de ceux qui vont lentement: car l'ame prenant les mesmes routes, les communique ainsi à nos corps, qui imitent par une reflexion merveilleuse la source de leur mouvement. C'est porquoy, comme les tons aigus, ainsi que nous verrons bientôt, éveillent les melancholiques, et que les graves composent la fougue et l'emporte -ment des bilieux, les danses qui en derivent font les mesmes effets, de sorte qu'elles doivent estre proportionnées, ou pour mieux dire qu'on les doit regler suivant la qualité du tem -peramment; on en peut dire le mesme des sexes, des aages, et treuver ainsi la cause purquoy certaines danses plaisent aux uns et qu'elles sont abandonnées des autres.')
25. Edmundus Hollyngus, De salubri studiosorum victu (Ingolstadt: per Adream Angermarium, 1602), pp. 85-6.
26. Two Italian examples: Carlo Bazzoni, L'igiene nella danza (Milan: Sonzogno, 1882); Vittorio Dall'Olio, Igiene e danza (Bologna: L. Andreoli, 1894).
27. Hermannus Conringius (praeses), De vertigine disputatio medica, respondens Valentinus Henricus Voglerus (Helmstadt, 1650), §§ 26 ss.
28. Valentinus Henricus Voglerus, Diaeteticorum commentariorum liber unus (Helmstadt, 1667), pp. 221-2 ('Quod si enim in gyrum instituitur, gravius adhuc corpus afficit et inprimis caput. Quo frequentius enim corpus vertitur, et in angustiorem quoque gyrum circumducitur, eo plus quoque motum illum caput persentiscit'). Here Vogler exploits the results of his enquiry De vertigine, to which he refers.
29. When, further on, Deodatus writes a praise of music, and indicates its effects (including the cure of tarantism), he still finds the place for blaming its abuse; and mentions 'lascivae, petulantesque saltationes et choreae' (lascivious and impertinent dances) as the con -sequences of the vulgar sort of music which is played inter convivia. Claudius Deodatus, Pantheum hygiasticum Hippocratico-hermeticum (Bruntruti: Wilhelmus Darbellay, 1628), 2, pp. 68, 71-2.
30. Plato in ten volumes, 10: Laws, 1, Books 1-6, with an English translation by R.G. Bury (Loeb Classical Library, London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1967), p. 93.
31. Josephus Phavorinus, De urbanorum virorum tuenda valetudine methodus nova (Fabriano: ex typ. Caesari Scaccioppae, 1620), pp. 197-8.
32. [Lambert Daneau], Traité des danses, auquel est amplement resolue la question, à sçavoir s'il est permis aux chrestiens de danser ([Geneva: F. Estienne], 1580), pp. 75-6 (see also p. 17 for his criticism of the inconsistency of 'exercising' oneself in dancing after revelling, while taking time away from resting - a commonplace in both moral and medical tracts). On the topics of health and agility (légèreté) in French sixteenth-century literature on dance see Anne Wéry, La danse écartelée de la fin du Moyen Age à l'âge classique (Paris: Champion, 1992), pp. 237-42. On the ways in which Renaissance moralists assessed dance as a physical exercise cf. also my 'Dance under trial', pp. 141-2.
33. Alexander de Hales, Summa theologica, cura et studio PP. Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 3 (Quaracchi, 1930), pp. 470-2.
34. Bicais, La manière de regler la santé, pp. 286, 305-6.
35. John Jones, The arte and science of preserving bodie and soule in healthe, wisedome, and catholike religion (London: Henrie Bynneman, 1579), pp. 22-3; cf. Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the lady of the Renaissance (2nd edn.: Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), p. 53. As for exercise in education, the topic of the virtues of wet nurses and their importance for the upbringing of children had a classical precedent in Plutarch - see: Plutarch, The Education of Children (De liberis educandis), in Plutarch's Moralia in sixteen volumes, 1, with an English translation by Frank Cole Babbitt (Loeb Classical Library, London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1969), pp. 13-17.
36. Plutarch, The Education of Children, pp. 37-41; Eleanor B. English, Physical education principles of selected Italian humanists of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento: exposition and comparison with modern principles (unpublished diss., Buffalo: State University of New York, 1978).
37. Richard Mulcaster, Positions concerning the training up of children (1581), ed. by William Barker (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), pp. 79-83 (quotations from pp. 80-1, 82); see also Nutton, 'Les exercices et la santé', pp. 307-8.
38. Ioannes Sylvius, De studiosorum, et eorum qui corporis exercitationibus addicti non sunt, tuenda valetudine, libri duo (Douai: ex off. Ioannis Bogardi, 1574), fols. 25v-26r. 39See quotation in my 'Dance under trial', p. 142. In a seventeenth-century reprint, the frontispiece of Lowin's Conclusions expressly refers to the medical aspects of the work: John Lowin, Brief conclusions of dancers and dancing [ ]. As also true physicall observations for the preservation of the body in health, by the use of the same exercise (London, 1609); significantly, the British Library copy of this edition belongs to its historical medical collections.
39. The professional limitation given in the title of the present article is in fact a simplifi -cation: some sixteenth-century authors of best-selling health manuals - as Thomas Elyot and Alvise Cornaro - were characteristically laymen, not physicians.
40. Robert Burton, The anatomy of melancholy, ed. by T. C. Faulkner, and others (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989-1994), 2, pp. 82-3, 112-16; 3, pp. 122-6, 187-96.
41. Richard Browne, Medicina musica, or a mechanical essay on the effects of singing, musick and dancing on human bodies (London: printed for John Cooke, 1729), pp. 51-69 (quotation from pp. 67-8). In the first edition, which was published anonymously - A mechanical essay on singing, musick and dancing (London: printed for J. Pemberton, 1727) - the chapter 'Of dancing' appeared at pp. 35-46. On iatromechanism, see Lindemann, Medicine and society, pp. 82-4.
42. Julius Alexandrinus, Salubrium sive de sanitate tuenda libri trigintatres (Cologne: apud Gervinum Calenium et haeredes Quentelios, 1575), p. 148. The final verse is a quotation from Vergil, Georgics, II, 384: Vergil in two volumes, 1: Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid I-VI, with an English translation by H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb Classical Library, London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, revised edn., 1967), p. 143.