their health?  It is a hard thing to observe a strict diet, et qui medice vivit, misere vivit, [2954]as the saying is, quale hoc ipsum erit vivere, his si privatus fueris? as good be buried, as so much debarred of his appetite; excessit medicina malum, the physic is more troublesome than the disease, so he complained in the poet, so thou thinkest:  yet he that loves himself will easily endure this little misery, to avoid a greater inconvenience; e malis minimum better do this than do worse.  And as [2955]Tully holds, “better be a temperate old man than a lascivious youth.”  ’Tis the only sweet thing (which he adviseth) so to moderate ourselves, that we may have senectutem in juventute, et in juventute senectutem, be youthful in our old age, staid in our youth, discreet and temperate in both.

MEMB.  II.
Retention and Evacuation rectified.

I have declared in the causes what harm costiveness hath done in procuring this disease; if it be so noxious, the opposite must needs be good, or mean at least, as indeed it is, and to this cure necessarily required; maxime conducit, saith Montaltus, cap. 27. it very much avails. [2956] Altomarus, cap. 7, “commends walking in a morning, into some fair green pleasant fields, but by all means first, by art or nature, he will have these ordinary excrements evacuated.”  Piso calls it, Beneficium ventris, the benefit, help or pleasure of the belly, for it doth much ease it.  Laurentius, cap. 8, Crato, consil. 21. l. 2. prescribes it once a day at least:  where nature is defective, art must supply, by those lenitive electuaries, suppositories, condite prunes, turpentine, clysters, as shall be shown.  Prosper Calenus, lib. de atra bile, commends clysters in hypochondriacal melancholy, still to be used as occasion serves; [2957] Peter Cnemander in a consultation of his pro hypocondriaco, will have his patient continually loose, and to that end sets down there many forms of potions and clysters.  Mercurialis, consil. 88. if this benefit come not of its own accord, prescribes [2958]clysters in the first place:  so doth Montanus, consil. 24. consil. 31 et 229. he commends turpentine to that purpose:  the same he ingeminates, consil. 230. for an Italian abbot.  ’Tis very good to wash his hands and face often, to shift his clothes, to have fair linen about him, to be decently and comely attired, for sordes vitiant, nastiness defiles and dejects any man that is so voluntarily, or compelled by want, it dulleth the spirits.