ABSTRACT
The widely used Regimen Sanitatis Salerni, designed to preserve health and ward off the ailments of old age, enjoyed popularity from the middle of the eleventh century to the sixteenth, and presented brief aphorisms concerning what food to avoid and what to accept. There were innumerable unsuspected channels in the Middle Ages by which plague and fever and loathsome skin diseases could claim their victims among rich and poor. The growth of commerce and of rapid transportation has enormously increased the number of foods available from all parts of the earth, and the ingenuity of manufacturers has devised a vast number of “breakfast foods” and special preparations of ordinary food that were altogether unknown even a half century ago. Exhaustive analyses have been made to determine the exact number of calories in various articles of diet and the effect of each upon the working power of the individual.
