Expert: Francesco Marchesani - 2/18/2006

Question
While searching online, I came across some references on a Vegetarian site that said that Hippocrates, the Ancient Greek Father of Modern Medicine,  advocated milk-exclusion diets in order to cure enfeebled children and various illnesses. It could be true, as many Ancient Greeks of the time were Vegetarians(though the site claimed that Hippocrates was an anti-dairy meat-eater) or one of the many   Vegan lies/hoaxes, but, if true, would be a very useful reference for my Palaeolithic diet site.
Can you confirm whether Hippocrates was against dairy, and, if so, can you tell me in which part of his works etc. he states any anti-milk comments?

Thanking You In Advance,
Geoff Purcell

Answer
Hello,
first of all, what we call "Hippocratic Corpus", i.e. the recollection of Hippocrates' writings, wasn't probably written by himself, or at least most of it was written by many different persons between 450 BC and 350 AD.
(see here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/redgold/printable/p_hippocrates.html ).
I think the milk-exclusion diet is a Vegan hoax: actually, in the Hippocratic Corpus we found references to a diet without milk to cure some illnesses, but at the same time milk is considered necessary in other cases (the suggested remedy for tuberculosis, is goat or ass milk).