Disputatio physica expendens rationes & caussas, cur plurimi ab esu casei abhorreant

him speaking thus later: I have sometimes applied to a man living in the country, having an ulcer of moderate size, cheese, which is of the contrary temperament to the aged, having been previously ground to smoothness. Externally, however, I placed leaves of dock upon it. Truly, if these are not present, one could also superimpose leaves of vine, or plane tree, or beet, or lettuce. But the cheese itself gluted the ulcer, and it was still soft, etc. So writes Galen. These harms of cheese, thus apprehended by someone, could certainly procure such an illicit impression in the Phantasia imagination/fantasy that he would decide it must be fled like poison: just as it is certain that some are averse to certain foods for no other reason than that they think death is accelerated by them, and that death lies hidden as if in the pot in which they are prepared: just as it is said by the sons of the Prophets in 2 Kings 4:40 concerning the bitter gourds. Just as Libavius has an example in his Treatise on Antipathy of someone who was averse to strawberries because he thought that toads had their lairs beneath them. At the same time, he mentions someone who did not want to eat pork, although he confessed it to be clean and of pleasing taste, because he had heard that certain physicians had said that leprosy comes from eating it. Similarly, I know a respectable woman familiarly, whom you could by no means persuade to eat eels,