THE PHILOSOPHY OF DIET. 821 



Burton concludes that " our own experience is the best physician ; 

 that diet which is most propitious to one is often pernicious to another. 

 Such is the variety of palates, humors, and temperatures, let every 

 man observe and be a law unto himself." 



Sir Henry has made elsewhere * some pertinent quotations from a 

 certain Italian work, of some fame in its day, " Discorsi della Vita 

 Sobria," written by Signor Luigi Cornaro. This amiable old gentle- 

 man, a native of Padua, addressed himself at the ripe age of eighty- 

 three to give the world assurance how much a sober life could do. 

 He repeated the assurance at ninety-five, and subsequently passed away, 

 " without any agony, sitting in an elbow-chair, being above a hundred 

 years old." An English translation of his Discourse was published in 

 1768, and from this Sir Henry has made his extracts. But an earlier 

 translation, the work of George Herbert, was published at Cambridge 

 in 1634, in a curious little volume with a very long title, " Hygiasti- 

 con, or the Right Course of preserving Life and Health unto Extreme 

 Old Age, together with Soundness and Integrity of the Senses, Judg- 

 ment, and Memory." This is really the title of the first essay in the 

 book, originally written in Latin by one Leonard Lessius, a divine who 

 has anticipated Sir Henry in the theory of the religious duty. " The 

 consideration of this business," he says, as an excuse for handling such 

 temporal concerns, " is not altogether physical, but in great part ap- 

 pertains to divinity and moral philosophy." Dr. Lessius holds both 

 with Bacon and Burton in their opinion of the value of personal experi- 

 ence, but he treats the doctors somewhat cavalierly. " Many authors," 

 thus his essay opens, " have written largely and very learnedly touch- 

 ing the preservation of health : but they charge men with so many 

 rules, and exact so much observation and caution about the quality 

 and quantity of meats and drinks, about air, sleep, exercise, seasons of 

 the year, purgations, blood-letting and the like, ... as bring men into 

 a labyrinth of care in the observation, and unto perfect slavery in the 

 endeavoring to perform what they do in this matter enjoin." Bacon 

 does his spiriting rather more delicately : " Physicians are some of 

 them so pleasing and conformable to the humor of the patient, as they 

 press not the true cure of the disease ; and some others are so regular 

 in proceeding according to art for the disease, as they respect not 

 sufficiently the condition of the patient." 



It is clear that with the wise men of old quantity rather than qual- 

 ity was the ruling law ; not what a man ate, but how much he ate 

 was the capital thing for him to consider. A tolerably simple diet is 

 advised, though the wise Lessius holds that the quality of the food 

 matters little, so that the man be healthy ; but whatever it be, let there 

 be moderation ; measure is the one thing needful. The difficulty of 

 finding this measure is confessed : " Lust knows not," says St. Augus- 

 tine, "where necessity ends." By the time he had reached his thirty- 



* "Diet in Relation to Age and Activity," London, 1886. 



