edy by it. It is a wonder to relate that prodigious temperance of
some hermits, anchorites, and fathers of the church: he that shall but read
their lives, written by Hierom, Athanasius, &c., how abstemious heathens
have been in this kind, those Curii and Fabritii, those old philosophers,
as Pliny records, _lib. 11._ Xenophon, _lib. 1. de vit. Socrat._ Emperors
and kings, as Nicephorus relates, _Eccles. hist. lib. 18. cap. 8._ of
Mauritius, Ludovicus Pius, &c., and that admirable [2952]example of
Ludovicus Cornarus, a patrician of Venice, cannot but admire them. This
have they done voluntarily and in health; what shall these private men do
that are visited with sickness, and necessarily [2953]enjoined to recover,
and continue their health? It is a hard thing to observe a strict diet, _et
qui medice vivit, misere vivit_, [2954]as the saying is, _quale hoc ipsum
erit vivere, his si privatus fueris_? as good be buried, as so much
debarred of his appetite; _excessit medicina malum_, the physic is more
troublesome than the disease, so he complained in the poet, so thou
thinkest: yet he that loves himself will easily endure this little misery,
to avoid a greater inconvenience; _e malis minimum_ better do this than do
worse. And as [2955]Tully holds, "better be a temperate old man than a
lascivious youth." 'Tis the only sweet thing (which he adviseth) so to
moderate ourselves, that we may have _senectutem in juventute, et in
juventute senectutem_, be youthful in our old age, staid in our youth,
discreet and temperate in both.

MEMB. II.
_Retention and Evacuation rectified_.

I have declared in the causes what harm costiveness hath done in procuring
this disease; if it be so noxious, the opposite must needs be good, or mean
at least, as indeed it is, and to this cure necessarily required; _maxime
conducit_, saith Montaltus, _cap. 27._ it very much avails. [2956]
Altomarus, _cap. 7_, "commends walking in a morning, into some fair green
pleasant fields, but by all means first, by art or nature, he will have
these ordinary excrements evacuated." Piso calls it, _Beneficium ventris_,
the benefit, help or pleasure of the belly, for it doth much ease it.
Laurentius, _cap. 8_, Crato, _consil. 21. l. 2._ prescribes it once a day
at least: where nature is defective, art must supply, by those lenitive
electuaries, suppositories, condite prunes, turpentine, clysters, as shall
be shown. Prosper Calenus, _lib. de atra bile_, commends clyste