Advice About Keeping Well (22-24)

ZEUXIPPUS. The use of emetics and cathartics, abominable comforts for an overloaded stomach, [*] ought never, except under the stress of great necessity, to be inaugurated, as is the way of most people, who fill up their bodies for the sake of emptying them, and then empty them for the sake of filling them up again, thus transgressing against nature, and are vexed no less at their fullness than at their emptiness — or, better, they are utterly depressed over their fullness, as being a hindrance to enjoyment, but set about bringing on emptiness with the idea of making room always for pleasures. The harmfulness in all this is manifest; for both procedures give rise to disorders and convulsive movements in the body. What is peculiarly bad in the use of an emetic is that it increases and fosters an insatiate greediness. For the feelings of hunger become rough and turbulent, like rivers that are interrupted in their course, and they gulp the food down violently, always ravening and resembling not appetites that need victuals, but inflammations that need medicines and poultices. For this reason the pleasures that lay hold upon such persons are swift in their action and imperfect, and attended by much palpitation and agitation while being experienced, and these are succeeded by distensions and sharp pains in the passages, and retention of gases, which cannot wait for the natural movements, but stay in the upper part of the body as in water-logged ships which require the jettisoning of their cargo, not merely of their surplus. The violent disturbances lower down in the bowels resulting from medication, by decomposing and liquefying the existing contents, increase rather than relieve the overcrowding. Just imagine that anybody, feeling much troubled at the crowd of Greeks living in his city, should fill up the city with Arab and Scythian immigrants! Yet it is just this radical mistake that some people make in connexion with the expulsion of the surplus of habitual and familiar foods, when they introduce into the body from the outside Cnidian berries, scammony, or other incongruous and drastic agents, which have more need of being purged away than power of purging our nature. It is best, therefore, by moderate and temperate living to make the body constantly selfsufficient and well adjusted as regards filling the stomach and emptying it.

ZEUXIPPUS. If ever absolute necessity befall us, vomiting should be induced without medication and a great ado, and without causing any disturbance beyond merely avoiding indigestion by at once allowing the excess to be peacefully ejected. Just as linen cleansed with lye and washing powders wears out faster than that washed in plenty of water, so vomitings with drugs maltreat and ruin the body. If the bowels are getting sluggish, there is no medicine like some sorts of food that afford a mild stimulus to the inclinations and gently dissolve the cause of trouble. Experience with these is familiar to all, and their use is not attended by discomfort. But if it will not yield to these, the drinking of water for several days, or fasting, or an enema, should be tried next rather than disturbing and pernicious dosing to which most people hurriedly resort, after the manner of licentious women who employ drugs and instruments to produce abortion for the sake of the enjoyment of conceiving again.

ZEUXIPPUS. But we need say no more about this class of persons. However, to speak once again of those too exact persons who interject set periods of fasting according to a fixed schedule, they are wrong in teaching their nature to feel a need of restraint when not in need of it, and in making necessary the unnecessary retrenchment at a time which makes demand for what is customarily required. It is better to apply such discipline to the body with a certain freedom, and, if there be no premonitory or suspicious symptoms, to keep, as has been already suggested,[*] our general mode of life responsive to changes so as to meet whatever may befall it, and not to let it be enslaved or bound to one formula of life, which has trained itself to be guided by certain seasons, or numbers, or schedules. For it is not safe, nor easy, nor befitting a citizen or a man, but like the life of an oyster or the trunk of a tree — this immutability and forced compliance in the matter of food and abstinence, movement and rest; it is fitting only for men who have reduced and restricted themselves to a retired, idle, solitary, friendless, and inglorious life, far removed from the duties of citizenship. No, said he, it fits not with my opinion. [*]

ZEUXIPPUS. For health is not to be purchased by idleness and inactivity, which are the greatest evils attendant on sickness, and the man who thinks to conserve his health by uselessness and ease does not differ from him who guards his eyes by not seeing, and his voice by not speaking. For a man in good health could not devote himself to any better object than to numerous humane activities. Least of all is it to be assumed that laziness is healthful, if it destroys what health aims at; and it is not true either that inactive people are more healthy. For Xenocrates did not keep in better health than Phocion, nor Theophrastus than Demetrius, and the running away from every activity that smacked of ambition did not help Epicurus and his followers at all to attain their much-talked-of condition of perfect bodily health. But we ought, by attention to other details, to preserve the natural constitution of our bodies, recognizing that every life has room for both disease and health.

ZEUXIPPUS. However, our friend said that to men in public life should be given advice opposite to that which Plato [*] used to give to the young men. For the philosopher, as he took his leave after the exercise, was in the habit of saying, Be sure, my boys, that you store up the lesson of this hour of leisure for some good end. But we would advise those who take part in the government to employ their active labours for good and necessary ends, and not subject their bodies to stress on account of small and paltry matters, as is the way of most people, who make themselves miserable over incidental things, and wear themselves out with loss of sleep, going to this place and that place, and running about, all for no useful or decent purpose, but only from a spirit of insolence, envy, or rivalry against others, or in the pursuit of unprofitable and empty repute. It was in special reference to such people, as I think, that Demolitus said,[*] that, if the body were to enter suit against the soul for cruel and abusive treatment, the soul would not be acquitted. Perhaps, too, there is some truth in what Theophrastus said,[*] in his metaphorical statement, that the soul pays a high rental to the body. At any rate, the body reaps the fruit of more evils from the soul than the soul from the body, inasmuch as the soul uses the body unreasonably, and the body does not get the care that it deserves. For whenever the soul is occupied with its own emotions, strivings, and concerns, it is prodigal of the body. I do not know what possessed Jason [*] to say: We must do wrong in small ways for the sake of doing right in large ways. But we, with good reason, would advise the man in public life to be indifferent to small things, and to take his ease and give himself plenty of rest while attending to them, if, when he comes to honourable and important activities, he wishes to have his body not worn by drudging, nor dull, nor on the point of giving out, but refreshed by quiet, like a ship in the dock; so that when the soul again points the way to needful activities, it May run like weanling colt beside its dam.[*]