This event celebrates the launch of our exhibition, 'FOOD: Recipe or Remedy'.

The event will begin at 6pm in our foyer with a wine reception. Then, from 6.30pm - 7.30pm, you will have the opportunity to hear two speakers, Ally Zlatar and Charlotte Holmes. Ally will discuss her lived experiences with disordered eating and her art on the subject while Charlotte will uncover the history of medical recipes and the historical relationship between food and medicine. The wine reception will then continue until 8.30pm with tours of our new exhibition.

There will be no strict entry timing so you are welcome to arrive and leave at any point over the course of the evening.

About the exhibition

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.