Maimonides’ Health Regime and Its Prevalence Today

Abstract

Until the middle of the last century, health was expressed as a mere opposition to disease, and the general perspective to improve it was focused on the advancement of medicine as the main tool for progress, but currently the need for other strategies beyond biomedical ones is recognized . From the report of the Canadian Minister of Health Marc Lalonde (Isla Perrot, Canada, 1935), A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians (1974), the notion of «health field» is introduced, in which it is considered that being healthy is the result of four determinants: 1st) human biology, 2nd) environment, 3rd) health care systems and 4th) lifestyle. For Maimonides (Córdoba, Spain, 1138; Fustat, Egypt, 1204) health is not only the absence of illness, but the result of the conjunction of three balances: the humoral (physiological), the psychic (psychological) and the cosmic (ecological). Likewise, within the historical context, the nomenclature and the theoretical-scientific framework of medicine in the Middle Ages, in its texts on the «health regimen» or hygiene of life, the four components that make up the current idea of ​​health can be recognized, with the equivalent terms: 1st) human nature, 2nd) local habitat, 3rd) continuous medical care for life and 4th) things necessary for the body, respectively. It can therefore be considered that Maimonides' doctrine on health was the most advanced of its time and that it survives over time, since it is based on concepts similar to those of the current Lalonde model.