Venison, Fallow Deer.] All venison is melancholy, and begets bad blood; a pleasant meat:  in great esteem with us (for we have more parks in England than there are in all Europe besides) in our solemn feasts.  ’Tis somewhat better hunted than otherwise, and well prepared by cookery; but generally bad, and seldom to be used.

Hare.] Hare, a black meat, melancholy, and hard of digestion, it breeds incubus, often eaten, and causeth fearful dreams, so doth all venison, and is condemned by a jury of physicians.  Mizaldus and some others say, that hare is a merry meat, and that it will make one fair, as Martial’s epigram testifies to Gellia; but this is per accidens, because of the good sport it makes, merry company and good discourse that is commonly at the eating of it, and not otherwise to be understood.

Conies.] [1355]Conies are of the nature of hares.  Magninus compares them to beef, pig, and goat, Reg. sanit. part. 3. c. 17; yet young rabbits by all men are approved to be good.

Generally, all such meats as are hard of digestion breed melancholy.  Areteus, lib. 7. cap. 5, reckons up heads and feet, [1356]bowels, brains, entrails, marrow, fat, blood, skins, and those inward parts, as heart, lungs, liver, spleen, &c.  They are rejected by Isaac, lib. 2. part. 3, Magninus, part. 3. cap. 17, Bruerinus, lib. 12, Savanarola, Rub. 32.  Tract. 2.

Milk.] Milk, and all that comes of milk, as butter and cheese, curds, &c., increase melancholy (whey only excepted, which is most wholesome):  [1357]some except asses’ milk.  The rest, to such as are sound, is nutritive and good, especially for young children, but because soon turned to corruption, [1358]not good for those that have unclean stomachs, are subject to headache, or have green wounds, stone, &c.  Of all cheeses, I take that kind which we call Banbury cheese to be the best, ex vetustis pessimus, the older, stronger, and harder, the worst, as Langius discourseth in his Epistle to Melancthon, cited by Mizaldus, Isaac, p. 5.  Gal. 3. de cibis boni succi. &c.

Fowl.] Amongst fowl, [1359]peacocks and pigeons, all fenny fowl are forbidden, as ducks, geese, swans, herons, cranes, coots, didappers, water-hens, with all those teals, curs, sheldrakes, and peckled fowls, that come hither in winter out of Scandia, Muscovy, Greenland, Friesland, which half the year are covered all over with snow, and frozen up.  Though these be fair in feathers, pleasant in taste, and have a good outside, like hypocrites, white in plumes, and soft, their flesh is hard, black, unwholesome, dangerous, melancholy meat; Gravant et putrefaciant stomachum, saith Isaac, part. 5. de vol., their young ones are more tolerable, but young pigeons he quite disapproves.

Fishes.] Rhasis and [1360]Magninus discommend all fish, and say, they breed viscosities, slimy nutriment, little and humorous nourishment.  Savanarola adds, cold, moist:  and phlegmatic, Isaac; and therefore unwholesome for all cold and melancholy complexions:  others make a difference, rejecting only amongst freshwater fish, eel, tench, lamprey, crawfish (which Bright approves, cap. 6), and such as are bred in muddy and standing waters, and have a taste of mud, as Franciscus Bonsuetus poetically defines, Lib. de aquatilibus.