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THE SECOND BOOKE 579
a thousand home-simples will doe as well* And I
know not whether it be as profitable (as they say)
and whether our nature require the residents of her
excrements, untill a certaine measure, as wine doth
his lees for his preservation. You see often men very
healthy, by some strange accidents, to fall into violent
vomites and fluxies, and voyd great store of excrements,
without any precedent need or succeeding
benefite: yea, with some em pairing and prejudice.
I learnt of Plato not long since, that of three motions
which belong to us, the last and worst is that of
purgations, and that no man, except he be a foole,
ought to undertake it, unlesse it be in great extremity.
The evill is troubled and stirred up by contrary oppositions.
It is the forme of life that gently must diminish,
consume and bring it to an end. Since the violent
twinges of the drug and maladie are ever to our losse,
since the quarrell is cleared in us, and the drug a
trustlosse helpe; by its own nature an enemie to our
health, and but by trouble hath no accesse in our state.
Let's give them leave to go on. That order which
provideth for fleas and moles, doth also provide for
men, who have the same patience to suffer themselves
to be governed that fleas and moles have. We may
fairely cry Bo-bo-boo; it may well make us hoarse,
but will nothing advaunce it. It is a proud and impetuous
order. Our feare and our despaire, in liew of
enviting help from it, doth distaste and delay it out of
our helpe : it oweth his course to sickness as well as to
health. To suffer itselfe to be corrupted in favour of
one, to the prejudice of the others rights, it will not
doe it, so should they fall into disorder. Let us goe
on in the name of God; let us follow. That order
leadeth on such as follow it: those that follow it not,
it haleth on, both with their rage and physicke together.
Cause a purgation to be prepared for your braine; it
will be better emploied unto it then to your stomacke.
A Lacedemonian being asked, what had made him live
so long in health, answered, ' The ignorance of physicked
And Adrian the Emperour, as he was dying,