Food: Recipe Or Remedy

The illustrations, books and objects displayed in this exhibition tell the story of the changing role of food in medicine over the last 600 years.

This is not a history of eating, it is a history of the relationship between food and health – through society, folklore, deprivation and dieting. It includes ideas from hundreds of years ago about how food could be used as a preventative, a palliative and a cure.

Additionally, it considers the role of the physician, including Fellows and Members of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, who pioneered the development of new and innovative food-based medical treatments.

This exhibition encourages us to consider both the social and the medical ideas around food and health, and aims to show how our shifting notions of, and relationship with, our diet have been central to medicine for hundreds of years.