tallions of the race; or if rich, be they
fools or dizzards, lame or maimed, unable, intemperate, dissolute, exhaust
through riot, as he said, [1346]_jura haereditario sapere jubentur_; they
must be wise and able by inheritance: it comes to pass that our generation
is corrupt, we have many weak persons, both in body and mind, many feral
diseases raging amongst us, crazed families, _parentes, peremptores_; our
fathers bad, and we are like to be worse.

MEMB. II.

SUBSECT. I.--_Bad Diet a cause. Substance. Quality of Meats_.

According to my proposed method, having opened hitherto these secondary
causes, which are inbred with us, I must now proceed to the outward and
adventitious, which happen unto us after we are born. And those are either
evident, remote, or inward, antecedent, and the nearest: continent causes
some call them. These outward, remote, precedent causes are subdivided
again into necessary and not necessary. Necessary (because we cannot avoid
them, but they will alter us, as they are used, or abused) are those six
non-natural things, so much spoken of amongst physicians, which are
principal causes of this disease. For almost in every consultation, whereas
they shall come to speak of the causes, the fault is found, and this most
part objected to the patient; _Peccavit circa res sex non naturales_: he
hath still offended in one of those six. Montanus, _consil. 22_, consulted
about a melancholy Jew, gives that sentence, so did Frisemelica in the same
place; and in his 244 counsel, censuring a melancholy soldier, assigns that
reason of his malady, [1347]"he offended in all those six non-natural
things, which were the outward causes, from which came those inward
obstructions;" and so in the rest.

These six non-natural things are diet, retention and evacuation, which are
more material than the other because they make new matter, or else are
conversant in keeping or expelling of it. The other four are air, exercise,
sleeping, waking, and perturbations of the mind, which only alter the
matter. The first of these is diet, which consists in meat and drink, and
causeth melancholy, as it offends in substance, or accidents, that is,
quantity, quality, or the like. And well it may be called a material cause,
since that, as [1348]Fernelius holds, "it hath such a power in begetting of
diseases, and yields the matter and sustenance of them; for neither air,
nor perturbations, nor any of those other evident causes take p