------“cui non fuit unquam
Ante sitim potus, nec cibus ante famem,”

and which all temperate men do constantly keep.  It is a frequent solemnity still used with us, when friends meet, to go to the alehouse or tavern, they are not sociable otherwise:  and if they visit one another’s houses, they must both eat and drink.  I reprehend it not moderately used; but to some men nothing can be more offensive; they had better, I speak it with Saint [2947]Ambrose, pour so much water in their shoes.

It much avails likewise to keep good order in our diet, [2948]"to eat liquid things first, broths, fish, and such meats as are sooner corrupted in the stomach; harder meats of digestion must come last.”  Crato would have the supper less than the dinner, which Cardan, Contradict. lib. 1. tract. 5. contradict. 18. disallows, and that by the authority of Galen. 7. art. curat. cap. 6. and for four reasons he will have the supper biggest:  I have read many treatises to this purpose, I know not how it may concern some few sick men, but for my part generally for all, I should subscribe to that custom of the Romans, to make a sparing dinner, and a liberal supper; all their preparation and invitation was still at supper, no mention of dinner.  Many reasons I could give, but when all is said pro and con, [2949]Cardan’s rule is best, to keep that we are accustomed unto, though it be naught, and to follow our disposition and appetite in some things is not amiss; to eat sometimes of a dish which is hurtful, if we have an extraordinary liking to it.  Alexander Severus loved hares and apples above all other meats, as [2950]Lampridius relates in his life:  one pope pork, another peacock, &c.; what harm came of it?  I conclude our own experience is the best physician; that diet which is most propitious to one, is often pernicious to another, such is the variety of palates, humours, and temperatures, let every man observe, and be a law unto himself.  Tiberius, in [2951]Tacitus, did laugh at all such, that thirty years of age would ask counsel of others concerning matters of diet; I say the same.

These few rules of diet he that keeps, shall surely find great ease and speedy remedy by it.  It is a wonder to relate that prodigious temperance of some hermits, anchorites, and fathers of the church:  he that shall but read their lives, written by Hierom, Athanasius, &c., how abstemious heathens have been in this kind, those Curii and Fabritii, those old philosophers, as Pliny records, lib. 11. Xenophon, lib. 1. de vit.  Socrat. Emperors and kings, as Nicephorus relates, Eccles. hist. lib. 18. cap. 8. of Mauritius, Ludovicus Pius, &c., and that admirable [2952]example of Ludovicus Cornarus, a patrician of Venice, cannot but admire them.  This have they done voluntarily and in health; what shall these private men do that are visited with sickness, and necessarily [2953]enjoined to recover, and continue