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

Lipsius’s Remarkable [Dissertation] on Food and Drink

For indeed, every animal tastes what is proportional to its own nature:
,, Thus CATS are said to be disturbed and driven to a frenzy by the smell of perfumes: Thus DOGS by their very nature shrink from WINE; Thus for SWINE, marjoram original: Amaracinum. An ointment or oil made from marjoram, which ancient sources like Lucretius claimed was toxic to pigs. is a poison.

From this, it becomes clearer than the noonday sun, and without a doubt, why one person greatly craves Wine; another Bread; another Eggs; another Strawberries; another the Rose; while another utterly loathes an Eel; or Garlic. Or perhaps if, by chance, whether knowingly or unknowingly, someone consumes something they dislike, they are entirely unable to cook, digest, and convert it into the nourishment necessary for the body and friendly to nature. This occurs because there is a certain hidden disagreement—an occult contrariety A "hidden" quality that cannot be explained by the four primary qualities (hot, cold, moist, dry) used in traditional Galenic medicine.—lurking within that specific kind of food; not everything can be reduced to manifest qualities.

Therefore, they do not act well at all, but rather poorly, maliciously, and with very little honesty—acting instead with craftiness—who detest these hidden properties and, with insulting words, call them the ASYLUM of IGNORANCE original: INSCITIÆ ASYLUM. A common polemical phrase used by skeptics to argue that "occult properties" were just an excuse for not knowing the actual physical cause.: They say these are NONSENSE; they hear they are NONSENSE. Let us drive them away, let us tear them apart.

To be sure, let them go off to Anticyra A Greek city famous in antiquity for producing hellebore, the standard treatment for madness.: and let them purge their brains with gloomy Hellebore:

These boasters original: μεγαλήγοροι (megalēgoroi). and babblers original: σπερμολόγοι (spermologoi)—literally "seed-pickers," a term used for those who pick up scraps of knowledge to gossip without understanding. are useless and loud-mouthed men. But I, for my part, propose this one noble axiom original: ἀξίωμα (axiōma). for you, my listeners, to consider now as a conclusion, and I teach it as something to be learned: That through the inborn temperament acquired by inheritance, the Nature, disposition original: διάθεσις (diathesis). and property—by the vote, opinion, and applause of all the wiser Physicians, of whom I am but a thin shadow—cannot be changed by any human industry, by any art, by any mystery, by any panacea. Not even the Amwaldian Likely referring to Georg am Wald (1554–1616), a physician who claimed to have a "Panacea" or universal cure-all which was highly controversial. remedies, though once praised with the highest lauds, great proclamation, and Stentorian songs and odes, nor perhaps even the Philosopher's Stone will be able to change it (though for nine [years/months?]...