Antonio Cocchi Quotes

It being far more reasonable to believe, that wise Man, who was... of the Truth of the Phenomenon as we are, was likewise no less capable of understanding the true Reason thereof founded on the Elasticity or natural Contraction of the Fibres whereof the human Body is composed... A Belief that Health is the principal part or Basis of human Happiness, and that it depends on a Harmony, that is, a Correspondence of the several Motions with the Powers that produce them...

We see that their most worthy Physicians and Philosophers were also of the same Opinion. Antonins Musa, who merited a public Statue in Rome ( i) for the perfect and happy Cure perform’d by him upon Augustus, made of Lettice (2) principally therein: and by his Advice it was that this great Prince came into that sparing and simple Pythagorean Diet, which Suetonius (3) minutely describes, confiding principally of Bread topp’d in cold Water, and of some Sorts of Apples of an agreeable and vinous Acidity. Horace also made great Use of the Pythagorean Diet, as he tells us in may Places of his judicious and most excellent Poems, therein following, as we suppose, the Advice of the fame Musa, who was his Physician.

I have always named fresh Vegetables, because the dry’d ones have almost all the bad Qualities of Animal Food, particularly as their earthy and oleaginous particles are too strongly coherent together.

Pythagoras.. was both a very great Philosopher and an able Physician.. whole Motive for the so much commending and introducing his Way of Life, was not any Superstition or Extravagance; but a Desire to be assisting to the Health and good Behaviour of Mankind...

I mean the Pythagorean Diet, which consisted (i ) in the free and universal Ufe of every Thing that is vegetable, tender and fresh, which requires little or no Preparation to make it fit to eat, such as Roots, Leaves, Flowers, Fruits and Seeds: And in a general Abstinence from every Thing that is animal, whether it be fresh or dried. Bird, Beast, or Fish.

Milk and Honey made up part of this Diet: Eggs, on the contrary, were excluded, Their Drink was to be the purest Water; neither Wine nor any vinous Liquor.

He forbid, in Flesh itself, that of carnivorous Animals above all other Kinds; and, for the same Reason, that of Wild Boars, and what was taken in Hunting