[Gocamino] Feet and wine

[KF]

Water was often contaminated, so it wasn't drunk as often & generally only as a last resort.  Fermented beverages (wine, beer) & those requiring boiled water (teas, & later coffee) were taken by everyone, including children.
   
  Kelly
blaroli at aol.com wrote:
  
Hello you all,

 

The Medical School of the San Pablo University in Madrid will deploy thirty graduating Podiatry students to the Camino.  Supervised by teachers and practicing physicians they will help out pilgrims at the Tricastela, Samos and Sarria albergues for the rest of the month.

This is the fifth year of such endeavor.  Last year these volunteers helped out 1,600 pilgrims suffering with such problems as tendonitis, blisters, fascitis, ulcers, hematomas, muscle fatigue, and other related ailments.  The volunteers will be at the albergues daily from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and will also advise all pilgrims about preventive pathology.

 

TheUSC (University of Santiago de Compostela)  will also have a summer course, at Cambados, about the use of wine on the Camino.  Paco Signui, a historian who has written on the subject, will be one of the lecturers.  It seems that there was no wine in Galicia before the Romans went there, and that the principal point of entry of the Romans, and of wine, was Arousa, where a great many ancient wine containers have been found.  With the advent of Christianity wine use took a religious context and its use became more widespread.  The Romans had, of course, drank wine since the beginning of their history, although they drank it diluted and, reportedly, only the lower classes drank it “straight”.

The pilgrims’ gourd in the Camino held wine as a rule, which was thought to renew energies and forestall some illnesses.  Albergues and Monasteries routinely offered wine to pilgrims.

-Interestingly, it was the Romans who developed the famous “gazpacho” as the best way to keep their soldiers from becoming dehydrated while affording some nutrition.-

(Wine must have changed over the centuries.  I don’t know that present day’s wine “renews energies”; a couple of glasses at lunch would do one in for the rest of the day, I should think.)

 

Hugs!

 

Rosina

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