De tuenda sanitate praecepta

ZEUXIPPUS. Aristotle is of opinion that to walk after supper stirs up our natural heat; but to sleep, if it be soon after, chokes it. Others again say that rest aids digestion, and that motion disturbs it. Hence some walk immediately after supper; others choose rather to keep themselves still. But that man seems to obtain the design of both, who cherishes and keeps his body quiet, not immediately suffering his mind to become heavy and idle, but (as has been said) gently distributing and lightening his spirits by either hearing or speaking some pleasant thing, such as will neither molest nor oppress him.

ZEUXIPPUS. Medicinal vomits and purges, which are the bitter reliefs of gluttony, are not to be attempted without great necessity. The manner of many is to fill themselves because they are empty, and again, because they are full, to empty themselves contrary to nature, being no less tormented with being full than being empty; or rather, they are troubled at their fulness, as being a hindrance of their appetite, and are always emptying themselves, that they may make room for new enjoyment. The damage in these cases is evident; for the body is disordered and torn by both these. It is an inconvenience that always attends a vomit, that it increases and gives nourishment to this insatiable humor. For it engenders hunger, as violent and turbulent as a roaring torrent, which continually annoys a man, and forces him to his meat, not like a natural appetite that calls for food, but rather like inflammation that calls for plasters and physic. Wherefore his pleasures are short and imperfect, and in the enjoyment are very furious and unquiet; upon which there come distentions, and affections of the pores, and retentions of the spirits, which will not wait for the natural evacuations, but run over the surface of the body, so that it is like an overloaded ship, where it is more necessary to throw something overboard than to take any thing more in. Those disturbances in our bellies which are caused by physic corrupt and consume our inward parts, and do rather increase our superfluous humors than bring them away; which is as if one that was troubled at the number of Greeks that inhabited the city, should call in the Arabians and Scythians.

ZEUXIPPUS. Some are so much mistaken that, in order that they may void their customary and natural superfluities, they take Cnidian-berries or scammony, or some other harsh and incongruous physic, which is more fit to be carried away by purge than it is able to purge us. It is best therefore by a moderate and regular diet to keep our body in order, so

ZEUXIPPUS. But to be done with these, there are some on the other side who are too exact in enjoining themselves to periodical and set fasts, doing amiss in teaching nature to want coercion when there is no occasion for it, and making that abstinence necessary which is not so, and all this at times when nature requires her accustomed way of living. It is better to use those injunctions we lay upon our bodies with more freedom, even when we have no ill symptom or suspicion upon us; and so to order our diet (as has been said), that our bodies may be always obedient to any change, and not be enslaved or tied up to one manner of living, nor so exact in regarding the times, numbers, and periods of our actions. For it is a life neither safe, easy, politic, nor like a man, but more like the life of an oyster or the trunk of a tree, to live so without any variety, and in restraint as to our meat, abstinence, motion, and rest; casting ourselves into a gloomy, idle, solitary, unsociable, and inglorious way of living, far remote from the administration

ZEUXIPPUS. For health is not to be purchased by sloth and idleness, for those are chief inconveniences of sickness; and there is no difference between him who thinks to enjoy his health by idleness and quiet, and him who thinks to preserve his eyes by not using them, and his voice by not speaking. For such a man’s health will not be any advantage to him in the performance of many things he is obliged to do as a man. Idleness can never be said to conduce to health, for it destroys the very end of it. Nor is it true that they are the most healthful that do least. For Xenocrates was not more healthful than Phocion, or Theophrastus than Demetrius. It signified nothing to Epicurus or his followers, as to that so much talked of good habit of body, that they declined all business, though it were never so honorable. We ought to preserve the natural constitution of our bodies by other means, knowing every part of our life is capable of sickness and health.

ZEUXIPPUS. The contrary advice to that which Plato gave his scholars is to be given to those who are concerned in public business. For he was wont to say, whenever he left his school; Go to, my boys, see that you employ your leisure in some honest sport and pastime. Now to those that are in public office our advice is, that they bestow their labor on honest and necessary things, not tiring their bodies with small or inconsiderable things. For most men upon accident torment themselves with watchings, journeyings, and running up and down, for no advantage and with no good design, but only that they may do others an injury, or because they envy them or are competitors with them, or because they hunt after unprofitable and empty glory. To such as these I think Democritus chiefly spoke when he said, that if the body should summon the soul before a court on an action for ill-treatment, the soul would lose the

ZEUXIPPUS. Upon which account, when business gives us leave, we ought to refresh our bodies, grudging them neither sleep nor dinner nor that ease which is the medium between pain and pleasure; not taking that course which most men do, who thereby wear out their bodies by the many changes they expose them to, making them like hot iron thrown into cold water, by softening and troubling them with pleasures, after they have been very much strained and oppressed with labor. And on the other side, after they have opened their bodies and made them tender either by wine or venery, they exercise them either at the bar or at court, or enter upon some other business which requires earnest and vigorous action. Heraclitus, when he was in a dropsy, desired his physician to bring a drought upon his body, for it had a glut of rain. Most men are very much in the wrong who, after being tired or having labored or fasted, moisten (as it were) and dissolve their bodies in pleasure, and again force and distend them

ZEUXIPPUS. I have heard that Tiberius Caesar was wont to say, that he was a ridiculous man that held forth his hand to a physician after sixty. But it seems to me to be a little too severely said. But this is certain, that every man ought to have skill in his own pulse, for it is very different in every man; neither ought he to be ignorant of the temper of his own body, as to heat and cold, or what things do him good, and what hurt. For he has no sense, and is both a blind and lame inhabitant of his body, that must learn these things from another, and must ask his physicians whether it is better with him in winter or summer;

ZEUXIPPUS. As for those inconveniences which sordidness and poverty bring upon many, as gathering of fruit, continual labor, and running about, and want of rest, which fall heavy upon the weaker parts of the body and such as are inwardly infirm, we need not fear that any man of employ or scholar — to whom our present discourse belongs — should be troubled with them. But there is a severe sort of sordidness as to their studies, which they ought to avoid, by which