quantity, disorder of time and place, unseasonable use of it, [1397]
intemperance, overmuch, or overlittle taking of it. A true saying it is,
_Plures crapula quam gladius_. This gluttony kills more than the sword,
this _omnivorantia et homicida gula_, this all-devouring and murdering gut.
And that of [1398]Pliny is truer, "Simple diet is the best; heaping up of
several meats is pernicious, and sauces worse; many dishes bring many
diseases." [1399]Avicen cries out, "That nothing is worse than to feed on
many dishes, or to protract the time of meats longer than ordinary; from
thence proceed our infirmities, and 'tis the fountain of all diseases,
which arise out of the repugnancy of gross humours." Thence, saith [1400]
Fernelius, come crudities, wind, oppilations, cacochymia, plethora,
cachexia, bradiopepsia, [1401]_Hinc subitae, mortes, atque intestata
senectus_, sudden death, &c., and what not.

As a lamp is choked with a multitude of oil, or a little fire with overmuch
wood quite extinguished, so is the natural heat with immoderate eating,
strangled in the body. _Pernitiosa sentina est abdomen insaturabile_: one
saith, An insatiable paunch is a pernicious sink, and the fountain of all
diseases, both of body and mind. [1402]Mercurialis will have it a peculiar
cause of this private disease; Solenander, _consil. 5. sect. 3_,
illustrates this of Mercurialis, with an example of one so melancholy, _ab
intempestivis commessationibus_, unseasonable feasting. [1403]Crato
confirms as much, in that often cited counsel, _21. lib. 2_, putting
superfluous eating for a main cause. But what need I seek farther for
proofs? Hear [1404]Hippocrates himself, _lib. 2. aphor. 10_, "Impure bodies
the more they are nourished, the more they are hurt, for the nourishment is
putrefied with vicious humours."

And yet for all this harm, which apparently follows surfeiting and
drunkenness, see how we luxuriate and rage in this kind; read what Johannes