Book 2
6
There are other, and, indeed, innumerable causes of this disease; but the principal is, much pus poured forth by the belly through the stomach. It is familiar to such persons as from their necessities live on a slender and hard diet; and to those who, for the sake of education, are laborious and persevering; whose portion is the love of divine science, along with scanty food, want of sleep, and the meditation on wise sayings and doings—whose is the contempt of a full and multifarious diet; to whom hunger is for food, water for drink, and watchfulness in place of rest; to whom in place of a soft couch, is a hammock on the ground without bed-clothes, a mean coverlet, a porous mantle, and the only cover to whose head is the common air; whose wealth consists in the abundant possession and use of divine thought (for all these things they account good from love of learning); and, if they take any food, it is of the most frugal description, and not to gratify the palate, but solely to preserve life; no quaffing of wine to intoxication; no recreation; no roving or jaunting about; no bodily exercise nor plumpness of flesh; for what is there from which the love of learning will not allure one?—from country, parents, brothers, oneself, even unto death. Hence, to them, emaciation of the frame; they are ill-complexioned; even in youth they appear old, and dotards in understanding; in mind cheerless and inflexible; depraved appetite, speedy satiety of the accustomed slender and ordinary food, and from want of familiarity with a varied diet, a loathing of all savoury viands; for if they take any unusual article of food, they are injured thereby, and straightway abominate food of all kinds. It is a chronic disease of the stomach. But inflammations, defluxions, heart-burn, or pain thereof, are not called the Stomachic affection.
