Translating disease : the vernacular medical treatise in the late medieval Kingdom of Aragon

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During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Kingdom of Aragon experienced a remarkable upsurge in the amount of practical medical advice available to readers in the vernacular. Translations of health compendiums, herbals, treatises on the plague, and gynecological manuals provided for non professionals the basic principles of health preservation. In 1305 Arnau de Vilanova wrote an abbreviated version of his Liber de regimine sanitatis (1299) for the king of Aragon, Jaume II, which was subsequently translated into Catalan at the request of the king's wife, Blanca who could not read Latin. In 1339 with the plague virtually knocking on the door of Catalunya, Jaume d'Agramont wrote his Regiment de preservacio de pestilencia, recognized as one of the first treatises in the vernacular to inform citizens of the threat of pestilence and epidemic.