Mat och levnadskonst

Arkiater Linné ger goda råd

Abstract

As professor of medicine, Linnaeus taught dietetics. He followed the pattern outlined by Galen and Regimen salernitatis, adding an extensive material originating from general cultural history and his own experience.

Early in his life he wrote Diaeta naturalis, a collection of rules focusing the blessings of natural life along the lines he himself had experienced during his journey into Lapland. His very popular lectures for the students of Uppsala – ongoing during more than three decades and collected in his to a large extent unpublished manuscript Lachesis naturalis and a great number of student notebooks – developed his primitivistic ideas, but also show a growing, pragmatic attitude towards different tendencies in Swedish society. Still, in his dietetics Linnaeus expresses an individualistic perspective rather than a collectivistic and national, in so doing following the classical tradition rather than getting close to the hygienistic movement coming a century later.

The character of this essay is mainly inventory, emphasizing the possibilities of this rather unknown material when it comes to analysing an important Enlightenment discussion as well as Linnaeus as a person.