Advice About Keeping Well (10-14)

ZEUXIPPUS. I am not unaware that men contract fevers because of fatigue and extremes of heat and cold; but just as the scents of flowers are weak by themselves, whereas, when they are mixed with oil, they acquire strength and intensity, so a great mass of food to start with provides substance and body, as it were, for the causes and sources of disease that come from the outside. Without such material none of these things would cause any trouble, but they would readily fade away and be dissipated, if clear blood and an unpolluted spirit are at hand to meet the disturbance; but in a mass of superfluous food a sort of turbulent sediment, as it were, is stirred up, which makes everything foul and hard to manage and hard to get rid of. Therefore we must not act like those much admired (!) ship-masters who for greed take on a big cargo, and thenceforth are continually engaged in baling out the sea-water. So we must not stuff and overload our body, and afterwards employ purgatives and injections, but rather keep it all the time trim, so that, if ever it suffer depression, it shall, owing to its buoyancy, bob up again like a cork.

ZEUXIPPUS. We ought to take special precautions in the case of premonitory symptoms and sensations. For what Hesiod has said [*] of the illnesses that go hither and thither assailing mankind is not true of all, that

Silent they go, since the wisdom of Zeus has deprived them of voices,

but most of them have as their harbingers, forerunners, and heralds, attacks of indigestion and lassitude. Feelings of heaviness or of fatigue, says Hippocrates, [*] when due to no external cause, indicate disease, since, presumably, the spirit about the nerves is subjected to tension and pressure owing to fullness within the body. Nevertheless, some men, although their body itself all but resists and would fain drag them to their beds and their rest, are led by gluttony and self-indulgence to rush off to the baths and eagerly to join in the drinking-bouts, as if they were laying in provisions for a siege and were fearful lest the fever seize them before they have had luncheon. Others, less gross than these, are not indeed caught in this folly, but very stupidly, just because they are ashamed to admit having a headache or indigestion, and to keep their clothes on all day, when a crowd on their way to the gymnasium invite them to come along, they get up and go, strip with the others, and go through the same exercises as do those who are in sound health. But as for the majority, Hope, backed by a proverb which well accords with incontinence and weakness of purpose, persuades and induces them to get up and go recklessly to their accustomed haunts, thinking to expel and dispel wine with wine, and headache with headache.[*] Against this hope should be set Cato’s caution which that grand old man phrased in this way [*]: Make the great small, and abolish the small altogether ; also the thought that it is better to submit patiently to fasting and resting with nothing to show for it, rather than to take any chances by rushing pell-mell to a bath or a dinner. For if there is anything the matter with us, failure to take proper precaution and to put a check on ourselves will do us harm; and if nothing is the matter, it will do no harm for the body to be subjected to some restrictions and cleared of some of its encumbrances. But that childish person who is afraid to let his friends and servants discover that he is in a state of discomfort from excessive eating or drinking, will, if he is ashamed to admit having indigestion to-day, tomorrow admit having diarrhoea or fever or gripes. The shame of want makes want a shame to bear,[*] but much more is it a shame to bear indigestion, overloading, and over-fullness in a body which is dragged to the bath like a rotten and leaky boat into the sea. For just exactly as some persons, when they are voyaging and a storm is raging, are ashamed to tarry on shore, and so they put out to sea, and then are in most shameful case, shrieking and sea-sick, so those who regard it as ignoble, amidst suspicious premonitory symptoms of their body, to spend one day in bed, and not to take their meals at table, keep to their bed most shamefully for many days, under purging and poulticing, servile and attentive to physicians, asking for wine or cold water, and suffering themselves to do and to utter many extravagant and ignoble things because of their distress and fear.

ZEUXIPPUS. Moreover, it is well that those who because of pleasures fail in self-control, and give way to their desires or are carried away by them, should be instructed and reminded that pleasures derive most of their satisfaction from the body;

ZEUXIPPUS. and as the Spartans give to the cook vinegar and salt only, bidding him seek whatever else he needs in the slaughtered animal itself,[*] so in the body are the best of sauces for whatever is served, if so be that it is served to a body which is healthy and clean. For everything of this sort is sweet or costly irrespectively of the user and by itself, but Nature decrees that it becomes pleasant only in and in connexion with the person that is pleased and is in harmony with Nature; but in those who are captious or suffering from a debauch, or are in a bad way, all things lose their intrinsic agreeableness and freshness. Therefore there is no need to look to see whether the fish be fresh, the bread white, the bath warm, or the girl shapely, but a man should look to himself to see whether he be not nauseated, feculent, stale, or in any way upset. Otherwise, just as drunken revellers who force their way into a house of mourning provide no cheerfulness or pleasure, but only cause weeping and wailing, so in a body that is in a bad condition and out of harmony with Nature, the pleasures of love, elaborate food, baths and wine, when combined with such elements in the body as are unsettled and tainted, set up phlegm and bile and bring on an upset, besides being unduly exciting, while they yield no pleasure to speak of, nor any enjoyment like what we expected.

ZEUXIPPUS. The very exact mode of living, exact to a hair’s breadth, to use the popular expression,[*] puts the body in a timorous and precarious state, and abridges the self-respect of the soul itself, so that it comes to look askance at every activity, and to no less a degree at spending any time or participating at all in pleasures or labours, and goes at no undertaking with readiness and confidence. A man ought to handle his body like the sail of a ship, and neither lower and reduce it much when no cloud is in sight, nor be slack and careless in managing it when he comes to suspect something is wrong, but he should rather ease the body off and lighten its load, as has already been said, and not wait for indigestions and diarrhoeas, nor heightened temperatures nor fits of drowsiness. And yet some people wait until a fever is already at their doors and then, being as excited as if a message or a summons to court had come, just manage to restrict themselves; whereas they ought, while these things are still afar off, to be cautious

Before the storm, as though along the strand The North wind blew.[*]

ZEUXIPPUS. For it is absurd to give careful heed to the croaking of ravens, the clucking of hens, and swine m their wild excitement over bedding,b as Democritusc put it, making signs of winds and rains out of these, and at the same time not to forestall nor take precaution against the stirrings, the ups and downs, and the premonitory symptoms in the body, and not to hold these to be signs of a storm that is going to take place in one’s self, and is just about to break. Wherefore not merely in the matter of food and exercise do we need to keep watch of our body, to see whether, contrary to its habits, it takes to these reluctantly and without zest, or at another time is thirsty and hungry in an unnatural way, but also, in the matter of sleep, to beware of lack of continuity and of evenness, marked by irregularities and sharp interruptions, and to beware also of the abnormal in dreams, which, if so be that our visions are improper or unwonted, argues an over-abundance or concretion of humours, or a disturbance of spirit within us. And also the emotions of the soul have often given warning that the body is perilously near disease. For instance, irrational discouragements and fears take possession of people oftentimes from no apparent cause, and suddenly extinguish their hopes; in temper they become irascible, sharp, and pained at trifles, and they are tearful and dismayed whenever bad vapours and bitter exhalations encounter and unite with the rotations of the soul, as Plato [*] has it. Therefore those to whom such things happen have need to consider and to remember that, if the cause is not one which concerns the spirit, it is one which concerns the body, and that it needs reducing or toning down.