SECTION 2. MEMBER 1. SUBSECTION 1. Diet corrected in the choice of food.

Diet—the regulation of daily life, or manner of living—according to Fuchsius and others, includes the six non-natural things I have already specified. These are major causes of illness; corrected, they form the whole or the chief part of the cure. Johannes Arculanus, in chapter 16 of his commentary on the ninth book of Rhazes, considers the regulation of these six things a sufficient cure.

Guianerius, treatise 15, chapter 9, calls them “the proper and primary treatment”—the principal cure. So do Montanus, Crato, Mercurialis, Altomarus and others: this is what should be tried first. Lemnius, in his Institutes, chapter 22, calls them the hinges on which our health turns: there is no hope of recovery without them.

Reinerus Solenander, in his seventh consultation, concerning a young Spanish gentlewoman who was so melancholy that she detested all company and would not sit at table with her close friends, prescribes this treatment above all others: nothing can be achieved without it. Aretaeus, an ancient physician, considers in book 1, chapter 7, that this alone is enough if the patient's illness has not advanced too far.

Crato, in a consultation for a noble patient, tells him plainly that, if His Highness will only follow a good regimen, he can guarantee the restoration of his former health. Montanus, in consultation 27, concerning a French nobleman, urges His Lordship to be extremely careful about his regimen, or all his other medicine will achieve little.

I find the same instruction word for word in Julius Caesar Claudinus, response 34; Scholtz's consultations, number 183; and Trallianus, book 1, chapter 16. Laelius a Fonte of Gubbio often boasts that he has achieved more cures of this kind by correcting the patient's regimen than through all other medicine combined.

So, in a word, I may say to most melancholy people what the fox said to the weasel that could not get out of the granary: “You must return lean through the hole you entered lean.” The six non-natural things caused the illness, and they must cure it.

Although I discuss these matters as particularly suited to the climate of melancholy, what is said here—like the writings of the man mentioned in Cicero, composed especially for the benefit of his friends at Tarentum and in Sicily—will nevertheless generally serve for most other diseases too, and help them likewise, if it is followed.

Of these six non-natural things, the first is diet in the strict sense: food and drink. Here we must consider the kind, quantity and quality, choosing the opposite of what was described earlier.

As to kind, the foods generally recommended are moist, easily digested, and unlikely to generate wind; not fried or roasted, but boiled, say Valescus, Altomarus, Piso and others—hot and moist, and nourishing. Crato, consultation 21, book 2, allows roast meat if the burnt or scorched surface, what we call the browned part, is cut away. Salvianus, book 2, chapter 1, vehemently condemns cold and dry foods.

Young, tender meat is approved: kid, rabbit, chicken, veal, mutton, capon, hen, partridge, pheasant, quail, and all the mountain birds that are so common in parts of Africa and Italy and, as Dublinius reports, are the ordinary food of peasants and country people in Palestine.

Galen objects to mutton, but undoubtedly he means the strong-flavoured mutton found in Turkey and Asia Minor, from sheep with those enormous fleshy tails weighing forty-eight pounds, as Varthema testifies in his travels, book 2, chapter 5.

The lean portion of fat meat is best. All kinds of broths and soups with borage, lettuce and other wholesome herbs are excellent, especially broth made from a boiled rooster: all foods eaten with a spoon. Arab physicians recommend brains, but Laurentius, chapter 8, objects to them, as do many others.

Eggs are approved as a nourishing, wholesome food. Butter and oil may be allowed, but with some restrictions: Crato limits them in this way, and for some people permits them only sparingly, at fixed times or in sauces. Sugar and honey are approved on the same terms.

All sharp and sour sauces must be avoided, along with spices, or at least used rarely; thus saffron may sometimes be allowed in broth. But these things may be used more freely according to whether the person's constitution is hot or cold, and whether he finds that they disagree with him.

The lightest, palest, weakest wine is best, neither thick nor strong; likewise, beer of moderate strength is most suitable. Bread made from good, pure wheat, with the bran thoroughly removed, is preferred. Laurentius, chapter 8, would have it kneaded with rainwater if that can be obtained.

By all means use pure, thin, light water, with a good smell and taste, clear as air, quick to heat and quick to cool—the kind Hippocrates so strongly approves—if it can be obtained. Rainwater is purest, provided it does not fall in large drops and is used immediately, for it quickly goes bad.

Next comes spring water that rises in the east and flows eastward, from a swiftly running spring in flinty, chalky or gravelly ground. The farther a river runs, the purer it generally becomes, although many springs yield their best water at the source.

The waters in hotter countries—Turkey, Persia, India, and within the tropics—are often purer than ours in the north: finer, thinner and lighter, by four ounces in a pound, as our merchants observe; more pleasant to drink, as good as our beer. Some of them, such as the Choaspes in Persia, are preferred by the Persian kings even to wine.

“Whoever has quenched his thirst from Clitor's spring shuns wine and, abstaining from it, delights in water alone.”

I do not deny that many rivers are always muddy, whitish and thick, like those in China, the Nile in Egypt, and the Tiber at Rome. But after their water has been left to settle for two or three days, it is free of sediment and clear, very serviceable, useful and good.

Many people use deep wells, as they did of old in the Holy Land, or lakes and cisterns, when no better supply is available. They fetch water in carts, or in gondolas as in Venice, or on camels' backs as at Cairo in Egypt, where Radziwiłł observed eight thousand camels employed daily in this work. Some keep it in reservoirs, as in the East Indies, built square with steps leading down, and this is not a bad practice.