Material Memorials > Sir Thomas Elyot, The Castel of Helth
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One of the key memorial passages from Castel of Helth, in which Elyot recommends, based on Renaissance humoral theory, good foods to consume or avoid in order to promote good memories and stave off grief.
One of the most prolific prose writers of the mid-sixteenth century, Sir Thomas Elyot’s Castel of Helth was a popular treatise on dietary treatments for a host of maladies. Elyot imagines memory as a bodily phenomenon that can be altered by diet, and for those troubled by memories of lost loved ones, recommends warm milk and blanched almonds, but the avoidance of “wyne thycke or troublous.”