The Anatomy of Melancholy

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.