10
ZEUXIPPUS. I am not ignorant that fevers seize men upon a fatigue or excess of heat or cold. But as the scent of flowers, which in itself is but faint, if mixed with oil is more strong and fragrant; so an inward fulness gives, as it were, a body and substance to external causes and beginnings of sickness. For without this they could do no hurt, but would vanish and fade away if there were lowness of blood and pureness of spirit to receive the motion, which in fulness and superabundance, as in disturbed mud, makes all things polluted, troublesome, and hardly recoverable. We ought not to imitate the good mariner who out of covetousness loads his ship hard and afterwards labors hard to throw out the salt water, by first clogging and overcharging our bodies and endeavoring afterwards to clear them by purges and clysters; but we ought to keep our bodies in right order, that if at any time they should be oppressed, their lightness may keep them up like a cork.
