PDF format (1.55 Mb) - The Ex-Classics Web Site

THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY
herbs are excellent good, especially of a cock boiled; all spoon meat. Arabians commend brains,
but Laurentius, c. 8. excepts against them, and so do many others; eggs are justified as a nutritive
wholesome meat, butter and oil may pass, but with some limitation; so Crato confines it, and "to
some men sparingly at set times, or in sauce," and so sugar and honey are approved. All sharp
and sour sauces must be avoided, and spices, or at least seldom used: and so saffron sometimes
in broth may be tolerated; but these things may be more freely used, as the temperature of the
party is hot or cold, or as he shall find inconvenience by them. The thinnest, whitest, smallest
wine is best, not thick, nor strong; and so of beer, the middling is fittest. Bread of good wheat,
pure, well purged from the bran is preferred; Laurentius, cap. 8. would have it kneaded with rain
water, if it may be gotten.
Water.] Pure, thin, light water by all means use, of good smell and taste, like to the air in
sight, such as is soon hot, soon cold, and which Hippocrates so much approves, if at least it may
be had. Rain water is purest, so that it fall not down in great drops, and be used forthwith, for it
quickly putrefies. Next to it fountain water that riseth in the east, and runneth eastward, from a
quick running spring, from flinty, chalky, gravelly grounds: and the longer a river runneth, it is
commonly the purest, though many springs do yield the best water at their fountains. The waters
in hotter countries, as in Turkey, Persia, India, within the tropics, are frequently purer than ours
in the north, more subtile, thin, and lighter, as our merchants observe, by four ounces in a pound,
pleasanter to drink, as good as our beer, and some of them, as Choaspis in Persia, preferred by
the Persian kings, before wine itself.
"Clitorio quicunque sitim de fonte levarit
Vina fugit gaudetque meris abstemius undis."
(Ovid. Met. lib. 15. "Whoever has allayed his thirst with the water of the Clitorius, avoids wine,
and abstemious delights in pure water only.")
Many rivers I deny not are muddy still, white, thick, like those in China, Nile in Egypt,
Tiber at Rome, but after they be settled two or three days, defecate and clear, very commodious,
useful and good. Many make use of deep wells, as of old in the Holy Land, lakes, cisterns, when
they cannot be better provided; to fetch it in carts or gondolas, as in Venice, or camels' backs, as
at Cairo in Egypt, Radzivilius observed 8000 camels daily there, employed about that business;
some keep it in trunks, as in the East Indies, made four square with descending steps, and 'tis not
amiss, for I would not have any one so nice as that Grecian Calis, sister to Nicephorus, emperor
of Constantinople, and married to Dominitus Silvius, duke of Venice, that out of incredible
wantonness, communi aqua uti nolebat, would use no vulgar water; but she died tanta (saith
mine author) fœtidissimi puris copia, of so fulsome a disease, that no water could wash her clean.
Plato would not have a traveller lodge in a city that is not governed by laws, or hath not a quick
stream running by it; illud enim animum, hoc corrumpit valetudinem, one corrupts the body, the
other the mind. But this is more than needs, too much curiosity is naught, in time of necessity
any water is allowed. Howsoever, pure water is best, and which (as Pindarus holds) is better than
gold; an especial ornament it is, and "very commodious to a city" (according to Vegetius) "when
fresh springs are included within the walls," as at Corinth, in the midst of the town almost, there
was arx altissima scatens fontibus, a goodly mount full of fresh water springs: "if nature afford
them not they must be had by art." It is a wonder to read of those stupend aqueducts, and infinite
-28