Happy New Year everyone.

As we break the seal on a brand new 24,

a lot of us are beginning to think about our resolutions for the year ahead. More to the point, some of us

may or may not still be feeling the effects of the revelry of Christmas or even just the excess of

last night. And we might be vowing to turn over a new leaf and start living life more

healthily in the new year. Maybe you'd like to take a more exercise, cut back on your alcohol intake, or just be a bit more thoughtful about the way that you eat.

These sorts of ambitions are perfectly normal in our society,

but you might be surprised to learn that the idea of keeping fit is by no means a new one.

Medieval people were every bit as interested in being, getting, and staying healthy as we are.

They just had some really different ways of looking at the whole thing.

In a medical system which is guided not by germ theory, but the idea that one needed to keep the

four humors, that's black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm in balance. Diet was less about calories

and more about foods that complimented your theoretical humoral makeup.

Medieval people might not have understood the concept of aerobic or anaerobic activity,

but they absolutely knew that exercise, from swimming to lifting weights, was of huge benefit.

Sure, they didn't know what germs were, but they knew that if you wanted everyone in the city to stay healthy, you had to clear out the rubbish and make sure everyone had clean water.

So, the same means and goals were there, but medieval people were using a very different framework to explain it.

I'm Dr. Eleanor Yannica, and on gone medieval from history hit I've asked the

legendary professor Carol Rockcliffe who you may remember from our episode on

Leprosy and whose research currently looks at ideas of health and fitness in

the late medieval period to join me once again

to explain exactly how medieval people thought about staying fit and how medical practitioners

...