-Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act 5, Scene 1.)
“Some may smile at the idea of ripe cucumbers, and say that the very thought of them, like the smell, is offensive....But whatever other uses are made of the cucumber, I entreat the reader not to use it in the form of pickles. These, of almost all the forms of vegetable substances, seem to me worst adapted to the human stomach; and I cannot but hope will be shunned by every reader.”
-The Young House-keeper, William Andrus Alcott (1846)
Of course, Alcott was a vegetarian and therefore already suspect, and he seems to have been rather an over-opinionated killjoy. He wrote 108 books, only some of which were about health and diet. He also wrote works expressing his views on exercise, school reform, school house design, morals, courting, and family life. in his 1856 book The Physiology of Marriage, for example, he attempts to advise young people on how to conduct their courtships, urging them to avoid "conversation which is too excitable" and the "presence of exciting books". He sounds like he was a laugh-a-minute. In any case, I wouldn't put too much stock in his opinion on pickles. I prefer to give Benjamin Franklin the last word on the subject: