Catull. 82.
It is a difficult matter to divest one’s self suddenly of a passion of a long standing: but this you may effect, if you desire it. This is the only thing that can preserve you, this you must endeavour to bring about at any rate.
How sure should we be of curing the disorders of men of learning, if it were possible to lull thought asleep. Here generous wines are of great service, provided the lungs are still unaffected, and a slow heat does not burn up the veins. Wholesome meats, and well boiled aliments, are of great service: milk is likewise of great service, provided the stomach is able to bear it. Riding is also useful. And it may be beneficial to purge away the peccant matter by some gentle, strengthening remedy. Bacon recommends rhubarb. Celsus, with more reason as I apprehend, recommended aloes, the use of which is of great service to the learned. Let them not, however, abuse an excellent remedy; for, though purges are sometimes necessary, they are dangerous when too frequently used: for the body begins to be disused to nourishment, and must of consequence grow weak. But beware, you sick men, of too violent purging remedies; because, as the intestines are often covered with mucus, this mucus is generally soft, and easily removed; when it is removed, a softer sort succeeds in its place; this badly defends the villous coat of the intestines; and, when it is left without defence, it either occasions incessant pains, or should be continually fomented by the tenderest sort of food.
The Peruvian bark or kinkina is here of the greatest efficacy imaginable; in this case there is not a better remedy; it restores digestion, strengthens the vessels, compresses the fluids, promotes secretions, and, above all, perspiration, repairs the strength of the nerves, and quells false motions. One of our most eminent geometricians soon repaired his wasted powers by a large draught of the decoction of kinkina, which he had constantly by his side.
If the constitution be not yet entirely broke, weakness oppresses the stomach and the nerves, the learned are troubled with hysteric symptoms, often attended with a vertigo, fainting fits, suffocation, and anxiety. They are to be cured like women who are troubled with hysterics, occasioned by mobility and want of tone in the fibres; they are to be cured, I say, by bitters, ferulacious gums, myrrh, steel, and the cold bath. The frequent use of the latter preserves a good state of health, and repairs a broken constitution; for it is efficacious above all other remedies, except there be already an extraordinary degree of weakness, in strengthening the stomach, the nerves, and the whole body; it restores sleep, produces a chearfulness and serenity of mind, and supplies new strength to pursue new studies. This made the ancients set so high a value upon it, that, even amidst the avocations of their necessary business, they never failed to bathe every day: and I most earnestly recommend to the literati the frequent use of bathing. I am not ignorant that the ancients often used the warm bath, but they used it as a remedy after exercise or fatigue; and it generally agrees very well with the robust and active; but they restored their strength with cold baths. Augustus, who received no benefit from the warm bath, when affected with great weakness of body, was advised to have recourse to the cold bath by Antonius Musa. Cold baths are salutary to delicate constitutions, and the health of the learned is generally, though not always, as much hurt by bathing in warm water, as promoted by bathing in cold.
Friction in a great measure produces the same effects with bathing; for if the whole lower belly of a person, whilst he lies supine in bed in the morning, with bent knees and an empty stomach, be rubbed all over with a rough cloth, he will be greatly benefited by it: by this artifice the motion in the abdomen is increased, the stagnant juices are thrown out, the secretions are increased, the excrements are prevented from staying too long in the body, and innumerable diseases are cured, which, as you have been frequently told, are caused by a slow circulation. If the skin is rubbed all over, either with a cloth or a flesh-brush, the cuticular secretion is greatly promoted, the circulation of the blood is so quickened, that a violent fever may be caused by rubbing alone, the motion is increased in the smallest vessels, the strength is repaired, and the ills caused by want of exercise are partly remedied. The ancients were therefore right in setting a great value upon friction: it was afterwards unhappily neglected; but the English physicians revived it with great success; and there is no class of men to whom it may be of greater service than to the studious. I would, however, recommend to them not to use this kind of exercise till they have read what Celsus and Galen have written concerning it.
There is another sort of remedy, which is often of the highest service to men of learning, I mean chalybeate waters; but they should not send for them, they should go where they are to be drunk at the fountain head. I do not indeed despise those that are sent for; nay, I have known men of learning who, by my advice, drank Seltzer waters at home during the whole year, by which, and remitting somewhat of their application, they recovered their health. But it is still better to drink them at their source, for they are there in greater perfection; and the journey is of service, because, whilst it lasts, the sick are exempt from all domestick cares, are amused with a variety of objects, enjoy agreeable company, relax their minds, and recreate their bodies: and the journey alone is of so much service, that hypochondriac persons are often cured by visiting remote libraries.
It would be as useless as it is impossible to enumerate all the waters that may be of service in repairing broken constitutions; for what nature intended as a most salutary remedy, it has liberally bestowed upon most regions. There are many in Switzerland; those of Aquia in Savoy, in my neighbourhood, deserve high praises; our waters of Rotula are still more to be recommended on account of the agreeableness of the place than their salubrious qualities; we must not forget those of Lausanne, the virtues of which have been demonstrated to me both by analysis and frequent observation; but the Seltzer waters surpass them all, at least in their reputation, if not in their qualities; those of Schwalbach and Spaw are still more powerful; and the Pyrmont waters are inferior to none.
These are not all, but the principal remedies by which those disorders may be cured which men of learning bring upon themselves by over great application: but their disorders are not occasioned by study alone: as men they are subject to all the disorders of men; and then they should be treated according to the rules laid down by experience for curing each disorder. Physicians, however, should never forget, that the patient, whom they have under their care, is a man of learning, and cannot, of consequence, have the same strength with which most other men are endued: as they have relaxed fibres and thin blood, they are not so capable of bearing phlebotomy: but the intestines are often filled with a collection of filth, which must be purged off; so that, as the illustrious Ramazzini has long since observed, it is better to have recourse to other evacuations with them than to bleeding.