Digestion in Early Modern Science and Medicine

Abstract

Digestion was long regarded in Western medicine and physiology as the most obscure of bodily functions. From Antiquity to the eighteenth century, radically different theories were proposed to explain digestion; none gained common assent by 1800. The importance of digestion was, nonetheless, universally recognized. Without nutriment, the body could not live, and without undergoing digestion, nutriments could not be transformed into a state in which they were usable by the body. Physicians, moreover, often tied a correct understanding of digestive processes to dietetics and hygiene, seeing good digestion as closely linked to both bodily and psychic health.