How to Avoid Melons, 1565

Jacques le Moyne de Morgues, Study of a Melon (c. 1575)

When you consider the small size of the root, and the great size of the stalk, and how close to the ground it is, and that it lies perpetually on the earth, and that it is influenced by every quality of the air, and that its growth is so fast, you will be compelled to admit that the melon is nothing other than the putrid moisture of the earth, colored by changing and harmful qualities, having every vice, harmful to the stomach, liver, spleen, intestines, lungs, kidneys, bladder, causing not only putrid humors but poisonous fluxes.

Therefore my advice is that it should not only be renounced, but even banished from human use by the decrees of rulers. For what pestilence is more pernicious, from which many thousands of men have perished for so long?

Girolamo Cardano, De methodo medendi

How much longer must we wait for our politicians to confront the pernicious pestilence of melons?