Book 2
7
The food should be pure, wholesome, of easy digestion, and plain; and the regimen every way well adjusted, as regards sleeping, walking, and places of residence. As to exercises, running, tumbling, and the exercise with the leather-bag;See Oribasius Med. Collect., vi. 33, and Paulus Ægineta, t.i. p. 24. all these with well-regulated intensity, but not so as to induce lassitude. Let vociferation also be produced, as being a seasonable exercise of the breath (pneuma). The clothing should be clean, not only to gratify the sight, but because filthy things irritate the skin. While fasting, the patients are to drink the wine of wormwood. Barley-bread is a very excellent thing, and a sausage in due season, and a little of mallows or cabbage half-boiled, with soup of cumin. For supper, the root of parsnip and granulated spelt (alica), with wine and old honey adapted for the mixing; and such marine articles as loosen the bowels—the soups of limpets, oysters, sea-urchins, and such fishes as inhabit rocky places. And of land animals, such as are wild, as the hare and the boar. Of winged animals, all sorts of partridges, wood-pigeons, domestic-pigeons, and the best which every district produces. Of fruits, those of summer; sweet wines are preferable to such as are strong. The natural hot-baths of a sulphureous nature, a protracted residence in the waters, and a sea-voyage.
