Note 360 — PHARMACOLOGIA.
Reading edition
Garlic, leeks, and onions constitute a tribe of culinary vegetables that has undergone great vicissitudes in reputation: amongst the Egyptians the onion and leek were esteemed as divinities, thus Juvenal,
“O sanctas gentes quibus hæc nascuntur in hortis
Numina!”
while by the Greeks, garlic was detested, although their husbandmen had been from the most remote antiquity in the habit of eating it, which Æmilius Macer explains by supposing that its strong odour was useful in driving away the venomous serpents and insects by which they were infested.
Horace alludes to this custom in his 3d Epode, which he composed in consequence of having been made violently sick by garlic at a supper with Macænas.
“Cicutis Allium nocentius
O dura Messorum ilia!”
The most powerful antidotes to the flavour of this tribe of vegetables are the aromatic leaves and seeds of the Umbelliferæ; thus the disagreeable odour of a person’s breath after the ingestion of an onion is best counteracted by parsley; and if leek or garlic be mixed with a combination of aromatic ingredients, its virulence will be greatly mitigated and corrected, nor does the fact seem to have escaped the observation of the husbandman in Virgil,
“Allia, Serpyllumque, herbas contundit olentes.”
Eclog. 2. line 11.
And the fact itself offers an additional illustration of the important principle of combination, discussed at page 148.