Quæ Fides et Religio sit Capessenda, Consultatio. Anvers, 1610. In the estimation of S. François de Sales, a work “not so much that of Lessio as of an Angel of the Judgment (Ange du Grand Conseil).”
Hygiasticon (Anvers, 1613–14, 8vo); it is superfluous to remark, his really valuable work. It was translated from the Latin into French by Sebastian Hardy, with the title of Le Vrai Régime de Vivre pour la Conservation du Corps et de l’Ame. Paris, 1646. Another editor, La Bonnodière, added notes, republishing it under the title of De la Sobriété et de Ses Avantages. Paris, 1701.
“Lessio,” writes the author of the article in the Biographie Universelle, “having been condemned by the physicians to have no more than two years longer to live, himself studied the principles of Hygiene, was struck by the example of Cornaro, resolved to imitate him, and found himself so well from such imitation that he translated his book (Della Vita Sobria), joining to it the results of his own experience, to which he owed the prolongation of his life by forty years.” For the rest, he was a man of extensive erudition; and Justus Lipsius celebrates, in some fine verse, the variety of his talents. (See Biog. Universelle Ancienne et Moderne. À Paris, chez Michaud, 1819.)
The Hygiasticon is prefaced by testimonials from three eminent physicians, setting forth their concurrence in the principles of the author. The English translation (1634) has prefixed to it addresses, in verse, to him; one of which is by Crashaw, the friend of Cowley, and a Dialogue between Glutton and Echo, also in verse. Affixed to this edition are an English version of Cornaro, by George Herbert, and a translation of an anonymous treatise by another Italian writer—That a Spare Diet is better than a Splendid and Sumptuous One: A Paradox.
In his chap. v. “Of the Advantages which a Sober Diet brings to the Body, and first, That it freeth almost from all Diseases”—Lessio promises the adherents of it, that in the first place:—
“It cloth free a man and preserve him from almost all manner of diseases. For it rids him of catarrhs, coughs, wheezings, dizziness, and pain in the head and stomach. It drives away apoplexies, lethargies, falling-sickness, and other ill-affections of the brain. It cures the gout in the feet and in the hands; the sciatica and diseases in the joints. It also prevents crudity (indigestion), the parent of all diseases. In a word, it so tempers the humours, and maintains them in an equal proportion, that they hurt not any way, either in quantity or quality. And this both reason and experience do confirm. For we see that those who keep themselves to a sober course of diet are very seldom, or rather never, molested with diseases; and if at any time they happen to be oppressed with sickness, they do bear it much better, and sooner recover than those others whose bodies are full fraught with ill-humours.
“I know very many who, though they be weak by natural constitution, and well grown in years, and continually busied in employments of the mind, nevertheless by the help of this temperance, live in health, and have passed the greater part of their lives, which have been many years long, without any notable sickness....
“The self-same comes to pass in wounds, bruises, puttings out of joint, and breaking of bones; in regard that there is either no flux at all of ill-humours, or, at least, very little of that part affected.... Furthermore an abstinent diet doth arm and fortify against the plague; for the venom thereof is much better resisted if the body be clear and free—wherefore Sokrates brought to pass that he himself was never sick of the plague, which ofttimes greatly wasted the city of Athens, where he lived, as Laertius writeth. The third commodity of the diet is that, although it doth not cure such diseases as are incurable in their own nature, yet it doth so much mitigate and allay them as that they are easily borne, and do not much hinder the functions of the mind. This is seen by daily experience.”
Lessio proceeds to descant upon the other benefits of the reformed regimen—such as that it prolongs life (other things being equal) to extreme old age, produces cheerfulness, activity, memory, and the like.[293]