SUBSECT.  VI.—­Immoderate Exercise a cause, and how.  Solitariness, Idleness.

Nothing so good but it may be abused:  nothing better than exercise (if opportunely used) for the preservation of the body:  nothing so bad if it be unseasonable. violent, or overmuch.  Fernelius out of Galen, Path. lib. 1. c. 16, saith, [1535]"That much exercise and weariness consumes the spirits and substance, refrigerates the body; and such humours which Nature would have otherwise concocted and expelled, it stirs up and makes them rage:  which being so enraged, diversely affect and trouble the body and mind.”  So doth it, if it be unseasonably used, upon a full stomach, or when the body is full of crudities, which Fuchsius so much inveighs against, lib. 2. instit. sec. 2. c. 4, giving that for a cause, why schoolboys in Germany are so often scabbed, because they use exercise presently after meats. [1536]Bayerus puts in a caveat against such exercise, because “it [1537]corrupts the meat in the stomach, and carries the same juice raw, and as yet undigested, into the veins” (saith Lemnius), “which there putrefies and confounds the animal spirits.”  Crato, consil. 21. l. 2, [1538]protests against all such exercise after meat, as being the greatest enemy to concoction that may be, and cause of corruption of humours, which produce this, and many other diseases.  Not without good reason then doth Salust.  Salvianus, l. 2. c. 1, and Leonartus Jacchinus, in 9.  Rhasis, Mercurialis, Arcubanus, and many other, set down [1539]immoderate exercise as a most forcible cause of melancholy.

Opposite to exercise is idleness (the badge of gentry) or want of exercise, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, stepmother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, and a sole cause of this and many other maladies, the devil’s cushion, as [1540]Gualter calls it, his pillow and chief reposal.  “For the mind can never rest, but still meditates on one thing or other, except it be occupied about some honest business, of his own accord it rusheth into melancholy.” [1541]"As too much and violent exercise offends on the one side, so doth an idle life on the other” (saith Crato), “it fills the body full of phlegm, gross humours, and all manner of obstructions, rheums, catarrhs,” &c.  Rhasis, cont. lib. 1. tract. 9, accounts of it as the greatest cause of melancholy. [1542]"I have often seen” (saith he) “that idleness begets this humour more than anything else.”  Montaltus, c. 1, seconds him out of his experience, [1543]"They that are idle are far more subject to melancholy than such as are conversant or employed about any office or business.” [1544]Plutarch reckons up idleness for a sole cause of the sickness of the soul:  “There are they” (saith he) “troubled in mind, that have no other cause but this.”  Homer, Iliad. 1, brings in Achilles eating of his own heart in his idleness, because he might