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ZEUXIPPUS. Medicinal vomits and purges, which are the bitter reliefs of gluttony, are not to be attempted without great necessity. The manner of many is to fill themselves because they are empty, and again, because they are full, to empty themselves contrary to nature, being no less tormented with being full than being empty; or rather, they are troubled at their fulness, as being a hindrance of their appetite, and are always emptying themselves, that they may make room for new enjoyment. The damage in these cases is evident; for the body is disordered and torn by both these. It is an inconvenience that always attends a vomit, that it increases and gives nourishment to this insatiable humor. For it engenders hunger, as violent and turbulent as a roaring torrent, which continually annoys a man, and forces him to his meat, not like a natural appetite that calls for food, but rather like inflammation that calls for plasters and physic. Wherefore his pleasures are short and imperfect, and in the enjoyment are very furious and unquiet; upon which there come distentions, and affections of the pores, and retentions of the spirits, which will not wait for the natural evacuations, but run over the surface of the body, so that it is like an overloaded ship, where it is more necessary to throw something overboard than to take any thing more in. Those disturbances in our bellies which are caused by physic corrupt and consume our inward parts, and do rather increase our superfluous humors than bring them away; which is as if one that was troubled at the number of Greeks that inhabited the city, should call in the Arabians and Scythians.
