The University of Leeds has made a 450-year-old text on cheese available online, showcasing its unique perspectives on dietary health. The book, A pamflyt compiled of Cheese, written in the 1580s, discusses the effects of cheese on individual bodies, recommending methods for ailments, such as using rancid cheese for gout relief. While not advocating such practices today, it illustrates an understanding of dietary intolerance long before the term existed. Its insightful commentary on personal constitution and food remains relevant, suggesting a historical awareness of individual health and nutrition.
Havinge his joynts full of knobbes or knottes, hit came in my minde to macerate that olde cheese with the decoction of fatte bacon, and to beate the same well in a mortar, and so to laye hit to his knotted joyntes, which done that man was greatly eased of the gowte.
He that will judge whether cheese be a convenyent foode for him, must consider the nature of the body, and the disposicion and temperamente of the cheese and both considered he shalbe hable to judge whether he is like to take harme be cheese or not.
The term dairy intolerant might not have been used then, but there's certainly an understanding here that cheese works better in some people's bodies than others.
The book, titled A pamflyt compiled of Cheese, contayninge the differences, nature, qualities, and goodness, of the same probably dates back to the 1580s and was unpublished and unknown until it surfaced at auction.
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