Subsection 1 Bad diet as a cause. Substance. The quality of foods.

Following my proposed method, having so far explained those secondary causes that are born with us, I must now proceed to the external and acquired causes that affect us after birth. These are either evident and remote, or internal, antecedent and immediate; some call the latter containing causes.

The external, remote, preceding causes are further divided into necessary and unnecessary. The necessary ones—because we cannot avoid them, and they will change us according to their use or misuse—are the six non-natural things so often discussed by physicians, which are principal causes of this disease.

In almost every consultation, when physicians discuss the causes, they find a fault and usually bring this charge against the patient: “He has offended in the six non-natural things.” He has invariably gone wrong in one of the six. Montanus, consulted about a melancholy Jew in consultation 22, pronounces that judgement, as does Frisemelica in the same case. In consultation 244, assessing a melancholy soldier, he assigns this reason for the illness: “He offended in all six non-natural things, which were the external causes from which those internal obstructions arose.” The same holds for the other cases.

Of these six non-natural things, diet and retention and evacuation are more directly material than the others, because they create new matter or concern its retention or expulsion. The other four are air, exercise, sleeping and waking, and disturbances of the mind, which only alter the matter.

The first is diet, consisting of food and drink. It causes melancholy when it is at fault in substance or in its attributes—that is, quantity, quality or the like. It may well be called a material cause, since, as Fernel holds, it has such power to generate diseases and supply their matter and nourishment. Neither air nor disturbances of the mind nor any other evident causes take effect or produce this result unless the bodily constitution and disposition of the humours cooperate. One may therefore say that diet is the mother of diseases, whoever their father may be; from this alone melancholy and many other illnesses arise.

Many physicians, I admit, have written extensive volumes on this single subject, the nature and qualities of every kind of food: Galen; Isaac the Jew, Haly Abbas, Avicenna and Mesue, four Arab writers; Gordonius; Villanovanus; Wecker; Jean Bruyérin, in his treatise on food and drink; Michele Savonarola, tract 2, chapter 8; Antonio Fumanelli, in his book on the regimen of the elderly; and Curio, in his commentary on the School of Salerno.

There are also Godefridus Stekius, in The Art of Medicine; Marsilius Cognatus; Ficino; Ranzovius; Fonseca; Lessius; Magninus, in his Regimen of Health; Frietagius; Hugo Fridevallius; and others, besides many writers in English. Almost every individual physician discusses particular foods at length in his chapter on melancholy.

But because these books are not available to everyone, I will briefly indicate which kinds of food, in their several varieties, generate this humour and which should be avoided. Fernel and others will show you how they alter and change the matter—first the spirits and then the humours by which we are sustained—and our bodily constitution. I hurry on to the subject itself, beginning with food that is harmful in its substance.

Beef, a strong and substantial food—cold in the first degree and dry in the second, says Galen in On the Powers of Foods, book 3, chapter 1—is condemned by him and all subsequent authors as producing thick, melancholic blood. It is good for healthy people with strong constitutions and for labourers, if properly prepared: salted, from a young animal, and from an ox, since in every species the meat of castrated animals is considered best. If the animal is old, those worn out by work are preferred.

Aubanus and Sabellicus praise Portuguese beef as the tastiest, best and easiest to digest; we praise our own. But all beef is rejected as unsuitable for those who lead an inactive life, have any inclination towards melancholy or have a dry temperament. “Such people,” Galen thinks, “easily fall prey to melancholic illnesses.”

Pork is by nature the most nourishing of all meats, but wholly unsuitable for people who live at ease or are in any way unsound in body or mind. It is too moist, full of humours, and therefore “harmful to the delicate,” says Savonarola, “so that one may suspect that eating it produces a quartan fever.” It is bad for queasy stomachs, so much so that frequent use may produce a quartan ague.

Savonarola advises against goat meat, as does Bruyérin, book 13, chapter 19. He calls the animal filthy and rank-smelling, and therefore supposes its meat will produce rank and filthy matter. Yet Isaac approves young, tender kid, as do Bruyérin and Galen, On the Powers of Foods, book 1, chapter 1.

Hart and red deer have a bad reputation: they yield coarse nourishment, a strong and coarsely textured meat, next to horseflesh. Although some peoples eat horse—the Tartars and the Chinese, for example—Galen condemns it.

Young foals are as commonly eaten in Spain as red deer, and are often used to provision their fleets, especially around Málaga. But such meats require long baking or boiling to temper their qualities, and even that will not suffice.

All venison produces melancholy and bad blood. It is a pleasant food, highly prized at our ceremonial feasts—for we have more deer parks in England than in all the rest of Europe. It is somewhat better when the animal has been hunted and the meat is well prepared by cooking; but it is generally bad and should seldom be eaten.

Hare is a dark meat, productive of melancholy and hard to digest. Frequently eaten, it brings on the nightmare and causes terrifying dreams, as does all venison; a whole jury of physicians condemns it. Mizaldus and some others say that hare is a cheerful food and will make a person good-looking, as Martial’s epigram to Gellia attests. But this is incidental: it comes from the good sport it provides, the merry company and the pleasant conversation that usually accompany eating it, and must be understood in no other way.

Conies are similar in nature to hares. Magninus compares them to beef, pork and goat in his Regimen of Health, part 3, chapter 17. Yet everyone approves young rabbits as good.

Generally, all foods that are difficult to digest produce melancholy. Aretaeus, book 7, chapter 5, lists heads and feet, bowels, brains, entrails, marrow, fat, blood, skins, and internal organs such as the heart, lungs, liver and spleen. These are rejected by Isaac, book 2, part 3; Magninus, part 3, chapter 17; Bruyérin, book 12; and Savonarola, rubric 32, tract 2.