XI.
CORNARO. 1465–1566.
AFTER the extinction of Greek and Latin philosophy in the fifth century, a mental torpor seized upon and, during some thousand years, with rare exceptions, dominated the whole Western world. When this torpor was dispelled by the influence of returning knowledge and reason evoked by the various simultaneous discoveries in science and literature—in particular by the achievements of Gutenberg, Vasco da Gama, Christopher Colon, and, above all, Copernik—the moral sense then first, too, began to show signs of life. The renascence of the sixteenth century, however, with all the vigour of thought and action which accompanied it, proved to be rather a revival of mere verbal learning than of the higher moral feeling of the best minds of old Greece and Italy. Men, fettered as they were in the trammels of theological controversy and metaphysical subtleties, for the most part expended their energies and their intellect in the vain pursuit of phantoms. With the very few splendid exceptions of the more enlightened and earnest thinkers, Ethics, in the real and comprehensive meaning of the word, was an unknown science; and a long period of time was yet to pass away before a perception of the universal obligations of Justice and of Right dawned upon the minds of men. In truth, it could not have been otherwise. Before the moral instincts can be developed, reason and knowledge must have sufficiently prepared the way. When attention to the importance of the neglected science of Dietetics had been in some degree aroused, the interest evoked was little connected with the higher sentiments of humanity.
Of all dietary reformers who have treated the subject from an exclusively sanitarian point of view, the most widely known and most popular name, perhaps, has been that of Luigi Cornaro; and it is as a vehement protester against the follies, rather than against the barbarism, of the prevailing dietetic habits that he claims a place in this work. He belonged to one of the leading families of Venice, then at the height of its political power. Even in an age and in a city noted for luxuriousness and grossness of living of the rich and dominant classes, he had in his youth distinguished himself by his licentious habits in eating and drinking, as well as by other excesses. His constitution had been so impaired, and he had brought upon himself so many disorders by this course of living, that existence became a burden to him. He informs us that from his thirty-fifth to his fortieth year he passed his nights and days in continuous suffering. Every sort of known remedy was exhausted before his new medical adviser, superior to the prejudices of his profession and of the public, had the courage and the good sense to prescribe a total change of diet. At first Cornaro found his enforced regimen almost intolerable, and, as he tells us, he occasionally relapsed.
These relapses brought back his old sufferings, and, to save his life, he was driven at length to practise entire and uniform abstinence, the yolk of an egg often furnishing him the whole of his meal. In this way he assures us that he came to relish dry bread more than formerly he had enjoyed the most exquisite dishes of the ordinary table. At the end of the first year he found himself entirely freed from all his multiform maladies. In his eighty-third year he wrote and published his first exhortation to a radical change of diet under the title of A Treatise on a Sober Life,[101] in which he eloquently narrates his own case, and exhorts all who value health and immunity from physical or mental sufferings to follow his example. And his exordium, in which he takes occasion to denounce the waste and gluttony of the dinners of the rich, might be applied with little, or without any, modification of its language to the public and private tables of the present day:—
“It is very certain,” he begins, “that Custom, with time, becomes a second nature, forcing men to use that, whether good or bad, to which they have been habituated; and we see custom or habit get the better of reason in many things.... Though all are agreed that intemperance (la crapula) is the offspring of gluttony, and sober living of abstemiousness, the former nevertheless is considered a virtue and a mark of distinction, and the latter as dishonourable and the badge of avarice. Such mistaken notions are entirely owing to the power of Custom, established by our senses and irregular appetites. These have blinded and besotted men to such a degree that, leaving the paths of virtue, they have followed those of vice, which lead them imperceptibly to an old age burdened with strange and mortal diseases....
“O wretched and unhappy Italy! [thus he apostrophises his own country] can you not see that gluttony murders every year more of your inhabitants than you could lose by the most cruel plague or by fire and sword in many battles? Those truly shameful feasts (i tuoi veramente disonesti banchetti), now so much in fashion and so intolerably profuse that no tables are large enough to hold the infinite number of the dishes—those feasts, I say, are so many battles.[102] And how is it possible to live amongst such a multitude of jarring foods and disorders? Put an end to this abuse, in heaven’s name, for there is not—I am certain of it—a vice more abominable than this in the eyes of the divine Majesty. Drive away this plague, the worst you were ever afflicted with—this new [?] kind of death—as you have banished that disease which, though it formerly used to make such havoc, now does little or no mischief, owing to the laudable practice of attending more to the goodness of the provisions brought to our markets. Consider that there are means still left to banish intemperance, and such means, too, that every man may have recourse to them without any external assistance.
“Nothing more is requisite for this purpose than to live up to the simplicity, dictated by nature, which teaches us to be content with little, to pursue the practice of holy abstemiousness and divine reason, and accustom ourselves to eat no more than is absolutely necessary to support life; considering that what exceeds this is disease and death, and done merely to give the palate a satisfaction which, though but momentary, brings on the body a long and lasting train of disagreeable diseases, and at length kills it along with the soul. How many friends of mine—men of the finest understanding and most amiable disposition—have I seen carried off by this plague in the flower of their youth! who, were they now living, would be an ornament to the public, and whose company I should enjoy with as much pleasure as I am now deprived of it with concern.”
He tells us that he had undertaken his arduous task of proselytising with the more anxiety and zeal that he had been encouraged to it by many of his friends, men of “the finest intellect” (di bellissimo intelletto), who lamented the premature deaths of parents and relatives, and who observed so manifest a proof of the advantages of abstinence in the robust and vigorous frame of the dietetic missionary at the age of eighty. Cornaro was a thorough-going hygeist, and he followed a reformed diet in the widest meaning of the term, attending to the various requirements of a healthy condition of mind and body:—
“I likewise,” he says with much candour, “did all that lay in my power to avoid those evils which we do not find it so easy to remove—melancholy, hatred, and other violent passions which appear to have the greatest influence over our bodies. However, I have not been able to guard so well against either one or the other kind of these disorders [passions] as not to suffer myself now and then to be hurried away by many, not to say all, of them; but I reaped one great benefit from my weakness—that of knowing by experience that these passions have, in the main, no great influence over bodies governed by the two foregoing rules of eating and drinking, and therefore can do them but very little harm, so that it may, with great truth, be affirmed that whoever observes these two capital rules is liable to very little inconvenience from any other excess. This Galen, who was an eminent physician, observed before me. He affirms that so long as he followed these two rules relative to eating and drinking (perchè si guardava da quelli due della bocca) he suffered but little from other disorders—so little that they never gave him above a day’s uneasiness. That what he says is true I am a living witness; and so are many others who know me, and have seen how often I have been exposed to heats and colds and such other disagreeable changes of weather, and have likewise seen me (owing to various misfortunes which have more than once befallen me) greatly disturbed in mind. For not only can they say of me that such mental disturbance has affected me little, but they can aver of many others who did not lead a frugal and regular life that such failure proved very prejudicial to them, among whom was a brother of my own and others of my family who, trusting to the goodness of their constitution, did not follow my way of living.”
At the age of seventy a serious accident befel him, which to the vast majority of men so far advanced in life would probably have been fatal. His coach was overturned, and he was dragged a considerable distance along the road before the horses could be stopped. He was taken up insensible, covered with severe wounds and bruises and with an arm and leg dislocated, and altogether he was in so dangerous a state that his physicians gave him only three days to live. As a matter of course they prescribed bleeding and purging as the only proper and effectual remedies:—