at dinner, plum-broth, a chicken, a rabbit, rib of a rack of mutton, wing of a capon, the merry-thought of a hen, &c.; to sounder bodies this is too nice and most absurd.  Others offend in overmuch fasting:  pining adays, saith [1435] Guianerius, and waking anights, as many Moors and Turks in these our times do.  “Anchorites, monks, and the rest of that superstitious rank (as the same Guianerius witnesseth, that he hath often seen to have happened in his time) through immoderate fasting, have been frequently mad.”  Of such men belike Hippocrates speaks, l.  Aphor. 5, when as he saith, [1436]"they more offend in too sparing diet, and are worse damnified, than they that feed liberally, and are ready to surfeit.”

SUBSECT.  III.—­Custom of Diet, Delight, Appetite, Necessity, how they cause or hinder.

No rule is so general, which admits not some exception; to this, therefore, which hath been hitherto said, (for I shall otherwise put most men out of commons,) and those inconveniences which proceed from the substance of meats, an intemperate or unseasonable use of them, custom somewhat detracts and qualifies, according to that of Hippocrates, 2 Aphoris. 50. [1437] “Such things as we have been long accustomed to, though they be evil in their own nature, yet they are less offensive.”  Otherwise it might well be objected that it were a mere [1438]tyranny to live after those strict rules of physic; for custom [1439]doth alter nature itself, and to such as are used to them it makes bad meats wholesome, and unseasonable times to cause no disorder.  Cider and perry are windy drinks, so are all fruits windy in themselves, cold most part, yet in some shires of [1440]England, Normandy in France, Guipuscoa in Spain, ’tis their common drink, and they are no whit offended with it.  In Spain, Italy, and Africa, they live most on roots, raw herbs, camel’s [1441]milk, and it agrees well with them:  which to a stranger will cause much grievance.  In Wales, lacticiniis vescuntur, as Humphrey Llwyd confesseth, a Cambro-Briton himself, in his elegant epistle to Abraham Ortelius, they live most on white meats:  in Holland on fish, roots, [1442]butter; and so at this day in Greece, as [1443]Bellonius observes, they had much rather feed on fish than flesh.  With us, Maxima pars victus in carne consistit, we feed on flesh most part, saith [1444]Polydore Virgil, as all northern countries do; and it would be very offensive to us to live after their diet, or they to live after ours.  We drink beer, they wine; they use oil, we butter; we in the north are [1445]great eaters; they most sparing in those hotter countries; and yet they and we following our own customs are well pleased.  An Ethiopian of old seeing an European eat bread, wondered, quomodo stercoribus vescentes viverimus, how we could eat such kind of meats:  so much differed his countrymen from ours in diet, that as mine [1446]author infers, si quis illorum victum apud nos aemulari