Singular Antipathies, or a Dissertation on the Natural but Miraculous Loathing, Hatred, and Abstinence from Food and Drink

...banished them from his table. I could bring forward and review many similar examples, but lest this speech of mine be wandering and too free, I shall pull in the reins and stay within the circle. Since I have pledged myself under oath to BREVITY, and because these examples do not fall within the boundaries of my investigation, I judge that they should be bypassed.

Likewise, those who do not need to be addressed now are people who, out of a religious vow or pious observance, either flee specific foods entirely or avoid them according to the rules of their ancestors only on certain prescribed days and months. Nor should we note those who, by the force of disease or the virulence of a symptom, have become abstainers from wine, beer, or some other food or thing. These cases do not belong to this place or this forum A Latin legal idiom meaning "this is not the appropriate jurisdiction/subject for this discussion."; they have an external cause original Greek: ἔξωθεν προσπίπτουσαν αἰτίαν (exōthen prospiptousan aitian). Furthermore, in those for whom this antipathy or loathing depends on a mental conviction, they are easily changed if they are persuaded otherwise; for the movement of spirits and thoughts is volatile, and nature itself is easily changeable original Greek: εὐμετάβλητος (eumetablētos).

My intention is to speak only of those who, from the very birth of their lives and by nature itself, utterly loathe certain types of edibles or drinkables. Even if they eat or ingest them, they are entirely unable to concoct In the 17th century, "concoction" referred to the first stage of digestion, where the stomach was believed to "cook" food using internal heat., digest, and convert them into the nourishment necessary for the body. Instead, they are forced to bring them back up by vomiting, even though these same foods are otherwise familiar and are easily digested and processed by others. It is my intent, I say, to search out, examine, and explain the cause of this aversion, this natural loathing, this congenital hatred, or rather, this hidden resistance and contrariety.

Indeed, history records it; daily experience proves it; and examples are so numerous and ready at hand that I see I must labor in choosing them—that there have been many such people, and I believe some are perhaps not absent from this very assembly...