How to stay healthy in the Middle Ages

HistoryExtra podcast

HistoryExtra

History

4.3 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2026

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In reality, were medieval people dirty and covered in mud? What did they think were the healthiest things to eat? And how often did they think they should be having sex? Speaking to Charlotte Vosper, Katherine Harvey reveals the practical, and somewhat surprising, ways in which individuals in the Middle Ages cared for body and mind – from food and sex to hygiene and even going to the toilet. ----- GO BEYOND THE PODCAST If you'd like to find out more about what people in the past ate, then don't miss HistoryExtra's brand new series, History's Greatest Dishes. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, or by clicking here: https://play.megaphone.fm/xrulxjiptaaaixz72wmtdw Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This History Extra podcast is brought to you by Pearson. Have you ever considered becoming an examiner?
0:05.9	If you're a history teacher or a history specialist with teaching experience and you're based in the UK,
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0:54.3	Associate. Pearson.com forward slash vacancies. That's associate.com forward slash vacancies.
1:03.1	Did medieval people really think about trying to live healthily?
1:12.7	Didn't they all just die young?
1:16.8	Well, according to Catherine Harvey, that's not quite the case.
1:21.0	Speaking to Charlotte Vosper in this episode of the History Extra podcast,
1:25.1	Catherine discusses her latest book, The Medieval Guide to Healthy Living,
1:29.1	revealing the practical and somewhat surprising, ways in which medieval individuals thought about exercise, well-being and food. And if you want to learn even
1:34.9	more about the surprising stories of some of history's most remarkable delicacies, don't miss
1:39.7	our new series, History's Greatest Dishes, which launches on the 13th of April. You can find more details
1:46.2	about that in the description to this episode, but for now, it's over to Catherine and Charlotte.
1:52.2	Your book is about the ways in which medieval people try to live healthy lives. But before we can
1:58.1	dive into the ways in which people try to stay healthy, I think we need to
2:01.7	establish the medical context in which medieval people were operating. So how were bodies understood
2:07.9	in the medieval period? So medieval people have really quite different ideas about how bodies work
2:13.8	to us. And that's because they believe in what's called the humoral system, which means
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