Advice About Keeping Well (15)

ZEUXIPPUS. It is very profitable when visiting sick friends to inquire of them the causes of their illness, not by talking pedantically and officiously about stoppages, irruptions, and trite generalities, and incidentally displaying some acquaintance with medical terminology and literature, but by listening in no perfunctory way to these homely and common details of overeating, exposure to the sun, fatigue, sleeplessness, and especially the manner of living which the man was following when he fell sick of the fever. Then, like Plato, who, on his way home, was accustomed to say on the subject of others’ faults, Am not I too possibly like them? [*] a man ought to correct in himself the faults he observes in his neighbours, and be watchful and mindful not to become involved in the same difficulties, and be himself compelled to take to his bed, and there give voice to his yearnings for precious health, but rather, when another is undergoing this experience, he will impress upon himself how valuable a thing is health, and that he ought to try to preserve this by giving heed to himself, and by being frugal. It is not a bad thing, either, to take a look at our own way of living; for if we have been engaged in a bout of drinking and eating, or in some hardships and other irregularities, and the body presents no suspicious or premonitory symptoms, nevertheless we ought to be watchful of ourselves and forestall any trouble by means of rest and quiet when fresh from the pleasures of love, or when fatigued; also by drinking water after the free use of wine and after social gaiety, and especially, after indulging in a heavy diet of meat or multifarious foods, to eat lightly, and leave no mass of superfluous residue in the body. For these very things are of themselves the causes of many diseases, and they add material and potency to the other causes.[*] Wherefore it has been very well said, Eating not unto satiety, labouring not unto weariness, and observance of chastity, are the most healthful things. [*] For incontinence, by undermining especially the powers by which the food is assimilated, causes further superfluity and overcrowding.