De tuenda sanitate praecepta

MOSCHIO. And you, Zeuxippus, diverted Glaucus the physician from entering into a philosophical discourse with you yesterday.

ZEUXIPPUS. I did not hinder him in the least, friend Moschio, it was he that would not discourse in philosophy. But I feared and avoided giving so contentious a man any opportunity of discourse; for though in physic the man has (as Homer[*](Il. XL 514.) expresses it) an excellency before most of his profession, yet in philosophy he is not altogether so candid, but indeed so rude in all his disputations, that he is hardly to be borne with, flying (as it were) at us open mouthed. So that it is neither an easy nor indeed a just thing, that we should bear those confusions in terms he makes, when we are disputing about a wholesome diet. Besides, he maintains that the bounds of philosophy and medicine are as distinct as those of the Mysians and Phrygians. And taking hold of some of those things we were discoursing of, perhaps not with all exactness, yet not without some profit, he made scurrilous reflections on them.

MOSCHIO. But I am ready, Zeuxippus, to hear those and the other things you shall discourse of, with a great deal of pleasure.

ZEUXIPPUS. You have naturally a philosophical genius, Moschio, and are troubled to see a philosopher have no kindness for the study of medicine. You are uneasy that he should think it concerns him more to study geometry, logic, and music, than to be desirous to understand

1. What in his house is well or ill-designed,
[*](Odyss. IV. 392.)

his house being his own body. You shall see manyspectators at that play where their charges are defrayed out of the public stock, as they do at Athens. Now among all the liberal arts, medicine not only contains so neat and large a field of pleasure as to give place to none, but she pays plentifully the charges of those who delight in the study of her by giving them health and safety; so that it ought not to be called transgressing the bounds of a philosopher to dispute about those things which relate to health, but rather, all bounds being laid aside, we ought to pursue our studies in the same common field, and so enjoy both the pleasure and the profit of them.

MOSCHIO. But to pass by Glaucus, who with his pretended gravity would be thought to be so perfect as not to stand in need of philosophy, — do you, if you please, run through the whole discourse, and first, those things which you say were not so exactly handled and which Glaucus carped at.

ZEUXIPPUS. A friend of ours then heard one alleging that to keep one’s hands always warm and never suffer them to be cold did not a little conduce to health; and, on the contrary, keeping the extreme parts of the body cold drives the heat inward, so that you are always in a fever or the fear of one. But those things which force the heat outwards do distribute and draw the matter to all parts, with advantage to our health. If in any work we employ our hands, we are able to keep in them that heat which is

induced by their motion. But when we do not work with our hands, we should take all care to keep our extreme parts from cold.

ZEUXIPPUS. This was one of those things he ridiculed. The second, as I remember, was touching the food allowed the sick, which he advises us sometimes both to touch and taste when we are in good health, that so we may be used to it, and not be shy of it, like little children, or hate such a diet, but by degrees make it natural and familiar to our appetite; that in our sickness we may not nauseate wholesome diet, as if it were physic, nor be uneasy when we are prescribed any insipid thing, that lacks both the smell and taste of a kitchen. Wherefore we need not squeamishly refuse to eat before we wash, or to drink water when we may have wine, or to take warm drink in summer when there is snow at hand. We must, however, lay aside all foppish ostentation and sophistry as well as vain-glory in this abstinence, and quietly by ourselves accustom our appetite to obey reason with willingness, that thus we may wean our minds long beforehand from that dainty contempt of such food which we feel in time of sickness, and that we may not then effeminately bewail our condition, as if we were fallen from great and beloved pleasures into a low and sordid diet. It was well said, Choose out the best condition you can, and custom will make it pleasant to you. And this will be beneficial in most things we undertake, but more especially as to diet; if, in the height of our health, we introduce a custom whereby those things may be rendered easy, familiar, and, as it were, domestics of our bodies, remembering what some suffer and do in sickness, who fret, and are not able to endure warm water or gruel or bread when it is brought to them, calling them dirty and unseemly things, and the persons who would urge them to them base and troublesome. The bath hath destroyed many whose distemper at the beginning was not

very bad, only because they could not endure to eat before they washed; among whom Titus the emperor was one, as his physicians affirm.