When it comes to lifestyle gurus, you can forget Carole Caplin, Nigella Lawson, Kabbalistic rituals, Atkins diets or total-makeover TV shows, because a Renaissance manuscript, the Tacuinum Sanitatis (Table of Health) got there first. A series of 130 coloured drawings (on view at a London gallery next month before being sold), it contains all you need to know about living a more "balanced" life and covers anything from what not to wear, to how to exercise, eat, farm, shop and cook. It is, according to medieval manuscripts specialist Dr Alixe Bovey, "a cross between Gillian McKeith's You Are What You Eat and Mrs Beaton's Household Management", and like all good lifestyle manuals it has "some highly sensible advice and some absolutely crazy stuff mixed in".
It is certainly based on notions of moderation and balance that would not be out of place in your average Sunday colour supplement. Health essentials include air, food and drink, movement and rest, sleep, and the moderation of extreme emotions. "The secret of health," it maintains, "is the proper balance of all these elements". Specific advice - all beautifully illustrated - ranges from what to wear in different climates, to libido-boosting foods (zinc-rich crayfish); how pasta can upset the stomach, and the benefits of a good chat. The manuscript, which was produced in Renaissance Italy by a group of artists in Andrea Mantegna's circle, is one of four (the others are dotted around Europe) and together they are the main surviving visual record of the rural and urban environment of that time.
"The whole idea of keeping everything in balance," says Bovey, "is really very contemporary given our interest in holistic and preventive medicine." Our latest dieting trend, for instance, is "mood food". Indeed, the Food and Mood Project, a web-based dietary self-help service backed by the mental health charity Mind claims that research shows "low-fat diets can make you depressed". Shocking news, but the Tacuinum got there 500-odd years ago when it advocated "duck rubbed with oil and stuffed with spices" as the ideal food for "fattening up a melancholic person".
Pop into Neals Yard Remedies or visit any modern-day herbalist and you'll get all sorts of advice on which herbs to take for any ailment you can think of. The Tacuinum (which Bovey says would have sat on the shelves of very wealthy art patrons next to an illustrated herbal) also contains a wealth of advice on herbs. In one picture, a man dressed in red is harvesting fennel, which, the text claims, is good for the eyesight and for fevers but can impede menstruation. Take a look at one of the zillion health websites, and fennel still figures large with claims that it can regulate hormone levels, ease stomach cramps and counter high blood pressure.
Similarly, our recent scientific breakthroughs when it comes to exercise and mood would be unlikely to raise an eyebrow in 15th-century Padua. Exercise can be a fantastic weapon against depression, recent studies have shown. But the Tacuinum could surely have saved our researchers years of data collection: "Exercise is very important in the Tacuinum," says Bovey. And the right kind of exercise is key: dancing, singing and playing instruments are all good, as is hunting. But not any old hunting. The best form of hunting was, says Bovey "the really easy kind". Our government may have banned hunting, but it does advise us to exercise "little and often" - just 30 minutes of walking, five days a week. "Easy", it seems, is just as popular today as it was 500 years ago.
Heart and circulatory disease is the UK's biggest killer - in 2002 cardiovascular disease killed about 238,000 people. The British Heart Foundation advises eating at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. The Tacuinum, meanwhile, advocates crocuses. They're good for the heart, it claims, and - an added if perhaps unlikely bonus - if soaked in "raisin wine" they can counteract drunkenness.
And it's not just what you eat, it's what you wear that counts. Trinny and Susannah say that what you wear can change your life, but that's old news. Anyone in possession of a Tacuinum would have been very well versed in when to wear linen, wool or a linen-wool blend and would fully understand that "seasonally appropriate clothing is advisable".
Of course, like all great lifestyle manuals, there is some barmy stuff to contend with. No modern-day GP would be likely to advocate eating (frequently poisonous) lupins to "thicken the blood". Nor would you find contemporary fertility "gurus" such as midwife Zita West, who has produced a range of fertility enhancing dietary supplements for both men and women, advocating the consumption of "fat thrushes" or "rooster testicles" to boost sperm production. We now know that sexual intercourse, though indeed useful for the preservation of the species, may not in fact be "harmful to those with cold or dry breathing". And even the most unhinged modern naturopath would surely balk at suggesting a link between egg whites and the development of freckles.
Sadly, lifestyle nonsense is not confined to the Renaissance. Far from it. Martha Stewart, middle America's favourite felon, is currently advising us in her online Whole Living Action Plan that "mould and mildew are more than creepy looking. They can zap your physical and mental energy". Eradicate your mould and your life will be transformed. She should, perhaps, have checked the Tacuinum, as it is far more sensible on the subject of damp, pointing out that winter is dangerous for old people, who should sit by the fire in a warm room.
Still, the manuscript shows that Renaissance society was no less concerned with bizarre lifestyle advice than we are. "This is part of a branch of medicine known as the 'hygiene' genre," says Bovey. "It's about prevention, not cure" and, she says, perhaps came - in part - from an understandable desire to avoid the other, scarier branch of medicine that involved curing sickness with things like bloodletting.
"Affluent people were very interested in health," says Bovey, "and people were acutely aware of their own mortality - after all, a plague could sweep through a town and take out a whole generation at any moment." They had rats; we have the Aids epidemic, cancer, the tsunami and the global terrorist threat. As Gillian McKeith's bank manager would surely attest, not much has changed when you stop to think about it.
· Tacuinum Sanitatis: A Guide to Health and Good Living can be seen at the Sam Fogg gallery in Clifford Street, Mayfair, London, July 1-29.
