hat they caught.

20. Blistering, cupping, bleeding, are seldom of use to any but the idle
and intemperate; as all those inward applications, which are so much in
practice among us, are, for the most part, nothing else but expedients
to make luxury consistent with health. The apothecary is perpetually
employed in countermining the cook and the vintner. It is said of
_Diogenes_, that meeting a young man who was going to a feast, he took
him up in the street, and carried him home to his friends, as one who
was running into imminent danger, had he not prevented him.

21. What would that philosopher have said, had he been present at the
gluttony of a modern meal? Would not he have thought the master of the
family mad, and have begged his servant to tie down his hands, had he
seen him devour fowl, fish and flesh; swallow oil and vinegar, wines and
spices; throw down sallads of twenty different herbs, sauces of an
hundred ingredients, confections and fruits of numberless sweets and
flavours? What unnatural motions and counter-ferments must such a medley
of intemperance produce in the body? For my part, when I behold a
fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy, that I see
gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable
distempers, lying in ambuscade among the dishes.

22. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but
man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of
that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon every thing that comes in his
way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry,
or a mushroom can escape him.

It is impossible to lay down any determinate rule for temperance,
because what is luxury in one may be temperance in another; but there
are few that have lived any time in the world, who are not judges of
their own constitutions, so far as to know what kinds and what
proportions of food do best agree with them.

23. Were I to consider my readers as my patients, and to prescribe such
a kind of temperance as is accommodated to all persons, and such as is
particularly suitable to our climate and way of living, I would copy the
following rules of a very eminent physician. Make your whole repast out
of one dish. If you indulge in a second, avoid drinking any thing strong
till you have finished your meal: at the same time abstain from all
sauces, or at least such as are not the most plain and simple.

24. A man could n