I wished to show that Pythagoras, the first founder of the vegetable regimen, was at once a very great physicist and a very great physician; that the… - Antonio Cocchi

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.

We find the same Preference given to vegetable Food by all the other ancient Latin Writers, who had any Understanding of the Nature of Things, and by Galen, and Plutarch, who has shown more particularly, perhaps than any one, the Danger of animal Diet, in his Precepts of Health, and in his Discourses on eating Flesh.