Amílcar de Sousa

Amílcar Augusto Queirós de Sousa (European Portuguese pronunciation: [ɐˈmilkaɾ awˈɣuʃtu kɐjˈɾɔʒ ðɨ ˈsozɐ]; 1876–1940) was a Portuguese medical doctor, and author of many health books, the most famous of which being O Naturismo (Naturism), published in 1912.

Biography

A pioneer of vegetarianism in Portugal, he was the president of the first Portuguese vegetarian society, the Sociedade Vegetariana de Portugal, founded in the city of Porto, 1911, and the director of O Vegetariano (The Vegetarian), a monthly magazine on vegetarianism.

A native of Alijó, Sousa corresponded with many well-known personalities from medicine and science, such as the German naturalist Ernst Haeckel, the American medical doctor John Harvey Kellogg, and the French physician Paul Carton.

He advocated a raw vegetarian diet. He was also against eggs, milk, tobacco and alcohol. He said that eating an egg was the same as ”eating a chicken embryo” and that milk was “not the food of man.”

D. M. Richardson wrote in the magazine The Healthy Life (July, 1912):

It is, by the way, interesting, to note in connection with this question of frutarianism, of fruit and salad eaters, that Dr. Amilcar de Souza, the president of the Portuguese Vegetarian Society, whose dietary, formed strictly of fruit and nuts, we quoted recently, has now added a cress salad to each of his meals. His plan at the present moment is as follows: - two meals a day, at noon and at six o’clock, and at each of them twenty-five nuts, six apples, six oranges, twelve dates and cress salad. He finds himself in the best of health.

He was also a pacifist and frequently criticized war in his articles.