Pulse.] All pulse are naught, beans, peas, vetches, &c., they fill the brain (saith Isaac) with gross fumes, breed black thick blood, and cause troublesome dreams.  And therefore, that which Pythagoras said to his scholars of old, may be for ever applied to melancholy men, A fabis abstinete, eat no peas, nor beans; yet to such as will needs eat them, I would give this counsel, to prepare them according to those rules that Arnoldus Villanovanus, and Frietagius prescribe, for eating, and dressing. fruits, herbs, roots, pulse, &c.

Spices.] Spices cause hot and head melancholy, and are for that cause forbidden by our physicians to such men as are inclined to this malady, as pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, mace, dates, &c. honey and sugar. [1376] Some except honey; to those that are cold, it may be tolerable, but [1377] Dulcia se in bilem vertunt, (sweets turn into bile,) they are obstructive.  Crato therefore forbids all spice, in a consultation of his, for a melancholy schoolmaster, Omnia aromatica et quicquid sanguinem adurit:  so doth Fernelius, consil. 45. Guianerius, tract 15. cap. 2. Mercurialis, cons. 189. To these I may add all sharp and sour things, luscious and over-sweet, or fat, as oil, vinegar, verjuice, mustard, salt; as sweet things are obstructive, so these are corrosive.  Gomesius, in his books, de sale, l. 1. c. 21, highly commends salt; so doth Codronchus in his tract, de sale Absynthii, Lemn. l. 3. c. 9. de occult, nat. mir. yet common experience finds salt, and salt-meats, to be great procurers of this disease.  And for that cause belike those Egyptian priests abstained from salt, even so much, as in their bread, ut sine perturbatione anima esset, saith mine author, that their souls might be free from perturbations.

Bread.] Bread that is made of baser grain, as peas, beans, oats, rye, or [1378]over-hard baked, crusty, and black, is often spoken against, as causing melancholy juice and wind.  Joh.  Mayor, in the first book of his History of Scotland, contends much for the wholesomeness of oaten bread:  it was objected to him then living at Paris in France, that his countrymen fed on oats, and base grain, as a disgrace; but he doth ingenuously confess, Scotland, Wales, and a third part of England, did most part use that kind of bread, that it was as wholesome as any grain, and yielded as good nourishment.  And yet Wecker out of Galen calls it horsemeat, and fitter for juments than men to feed on.  But read Galen himself, Lib. 1.  De cibis boni et mali succi, more largely discoursing of corn and bread.