Galen on Food and Diet by Galen. Grant Mark

Author:Galen.,Grant, Mark. [MARK GRANT]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2011-08-20T04:00:00+00:00

Calavances and birds’ peas

As with fenugreek, these seeds are soaked beforehand in water, and the whole length of the root is eaten dipped in fish-sauce as a starter to loosen the bowels. They contain a nutritious juice which, when distributed through the body, is digested better than fenugreek.

I knew a young man – a student at the school of medicine in Alexandria – who for four years used as his accompaniment with bread only the following pulses: fenugreek, calavances, birds’ peas and lupins. He sometimes also touched olives from Memphis, vegetables and a few fruits which can be eaten without cooking, because he had resolved never to light a fire. He stayed healthy during all these years and his body was in no worse a condition than at the beginning. Of course he ate these foods with fish-sauce, on one occasion adding just olive oil to the fish-sauce, on another occasion also wine, on another occasion vinegar too, but otherwise only salt as with lupins.

What this book repeats about a healthy diet in these brief chapters has been treated in more detail in my treatise On the Preservation of Health. But for the moment let me add the following to what I was saying about birds’ peas and calavances. As food, they lie midway between whatever contains good and whatever contains bad juices, the digestible and the indigestible, the costive and the laxative, the flatulent and without flatulence, the less nutritious and the more nutritious. They therefore hold no active quality, unlike some foods which harbour sharp, astringent, salty, bitter or sweet juices.

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