822 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sixth year Cornaro had accustomed himself to a daily measure of 

 twelve ounces of food and fourteen of drink which does not, I own, 

 convey a very exact notion to me, though I take it we Gargantuans 

 should find the measure small. He does not seem to have been par- 

 ticular what he ate, and he did not shun wine. " I chose that wine," 

 he says, " which fitted my stomach and in such measure as easily might 

 be digested." He found it no labor to write immediately after meals. 

 On the contrary, his spirits were then so brisk that he had to sing a 

 song to get rid of his superfluous energies before sitting down to his 

 desk. Lessius is loath to commit himself to any certain scale : " If thou 

 dost usually take so much food at meals as thou art thereby made unfit 

 for the duties and offices belonging to the mind, ... it is then evident 

 that thou dost exceed the measure which thou oughtest to hold." He 

 tells, on ancient authority, some marvelous tales of the little men have 

 found enough to keep body and soul together : how one throve through 

 a long life on milk alone, how another lived for twenty years on cheese. 

 In monasteries and in the universities this desired measure is, he says, 

 more easily to be found, for there either the statutes of the societies, 

 or the " discreet orders of the superiors" have ordained the quantities 

 of wine and beer that are fit to be drunk. Of monasteries I have no 

 experience, but in the universities I have been given to understand 

 that it is (or was, for the old order changes now so fast that it is hard 

 to say what a day may not bring forth) the custom to leave such mat- 

 ters mainly to the discreetness of the students which, it may be, is 

 like Goethe's poetry, not always inevitable enough. On the whole, 

 Lessius seems to incline to Cornaro's allowance as sufficient, and 

 perhaps as good an average as it is possible to strike. But he insists, 

 as do all these antique sages, that the measure must vary with the 

 age, condition, and business of the man. No hard and fast rule can 

 there be. The golden mean must vary in all sorts of people, " accord- 

 ing to the diversity of complexions in sundry persons, and of youth 

 and strength in the selfsame body." And again : " A greater measure 

 is requisite to him that is occupied in bodily labor and continually ex- 

 ercising the faculties of the body than to him that is altogether in 

 studies." On this point all are agreed ; on this and, I am sorry to 

 say, on one other : qui medice vivit, misere vivit, " it is a miserable 

 life to live after the physician's forescript." 



It will, then, be seen that our forefathers were by no means so neg- 

 ligent of this thing as Sir Henry Thompson fancies. If they were not 

 so minute and curious as we now are, they took at least a broad and 

 liberal view, and surely a most wise one. It is, indeed, his general ac- 

 ceptance of this view which gives Sir Henry's utterances more value 

 than those some of his brethren have put forth. " In matters of diet," 

 run his wise words, "many persons have individual peculiarities ; and 

 while certain fixed principles exist as absolutely cardinal in the detail 

 of their application to each man's wants, an infinity of stomach eccen- 



