Food: Recipe or Remedy

28 April 2022 - 27 January 2023

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

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

Additionally, it considered 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 encouraged us to consider both the social and the medical ideas around food and health, and aimed to show how our shifting notions of, and relationship with, our diet have been central to medicine for hundreds of years.

There were artworks depicting eating disorders, and other forms of disordered eating, in this exhibition.