It is widely believed that Pythagoras thought it was a bad idea to eat beans. As all his writings are lost, there is no direct evidence. However, the Pythagoreans by all reports followed the injunction, as Bertrand Russell reported, although he didn’t seem to take it all very seriously:
[Pythagoras] founded a religion on which the the main tenets were the transmigration of souls and the sinfulness of eating beans. His religion was embodied in a religious order, which, here and there, acquired rule of the state … But the unregenerate hankered after beans, and sooner or later rebelled.
Bishop Berkeley was convinced of the medicinal value of tar water. He even wrote a treatise on the matter, a “chain of philosophical reflections that start with tar and end with the Trinityâ€. Of course he did. Then he wrote a poem on tar. He called it:
On Tar
Hail vulgar juice of never-fading pine!
Cheap as thou art, thy virtues are divine …
Sir Francis Bacon claims to have cured his warts by rubbing them with pork fat and then hanging it in the sun. By the time the fat had melted, five weeks later, the warts disappeared.
What does this have to do with Bacon’s work as a philosopher? Nothing … but it’s a good opportunity for some daft puns …