Advantages above all other Means of Health, that it may be practised by all Ranks and Conditions, at any Season or in any Place.  It is a kind of Regimen into which every Man may put himself, without Interruption to Business, Expence of Mony, or Loss of Time.  If Exercise throws off all Superfluities, Temperance prevents them; if Exercise clears the Vessels, Temperance neither satiates nor overstrains them; if Exercise raises proper Ferments in the Humours, and promotes the Circulation of the Blood, Temperance gives Nature her full Play, and enables her to exert her self in all her Force and Vigour; if Exercise dissipates a growing Distemper, Temperance starves it.

Physick, for the most part, is nothing else but the Substitute of Exercise or Temperance.  Medicines are indeed absolutely necessary in acute Distempers, that cannot wait the slow Operations of these two great Instruments of Health; but did Men live in an habitual Course of Exercise and Temperance, there would be but little Occasion for them.  Accordingly we find that those Parts of the World are the most healthy, where they subsist by the Chace; and that Men lived longest when their Lives were employed in hunting, and when they had little Food besides what they caught.  Blistering, Cupping, Bleeding, are seldom of use but to the Idle and Intemperate; as all those inward Applications which are so much in practice among us, are for the most part nothing else but Expedients to make Luxury consistent with Health.  The Apothecary is perpetually employed in countermining the Cook and the Vintner.  It is said of Diogenes, [2] that meeting a young Man who was going to a Feast, he took him up in the Street and carried him home to his Friends, as one who was running into imminent Danger, had not he prevented him.  What would that Philosopher have said, had he been present at the Gluttony of a modern Meal?  Would not he have thought the Master of a Family mad, and have begged his Servants to tie down his Hands, had he seen him devour Fowl, Fish, and Flesh; swallow Oyl and Vinegar, Wines and Spices; throw down Sallads of twenty different Herbs, Sauces of an hundred Ingredients, Confections and Fruits of numberless Sweets and Flavours?  What unnatural Motions and Counterferments must such a Medley of Intemperance produce in the Body?  For my Part, when I behold a fashionable Table set out in all its Magnificence, I fancy that I see Gouts and Dropsies, Feavers and Lethargies, with other innumerable Distempers lying in Ambuscade among the Dishes.

Nature delights in the most plain and simple Diet.  Every Animal, but Man, keeps to one Dish.  Herbs are the Food of this Species, Fish of that, and Flesh of a Third.  Man falls upon every thing that comes in his Way, not the smallest Fruit or Excrescence of the Earth, scarce a Berry or a Mushroom, can escape him.