iffuse the poisonous vapour which corrupts
the blood and the marrow. They do suffer a little from consumption,
because they cannot perspire at the breast, but they never have asthma,
for the humid nature of which a heavy man is required. They cure hot
fevers with cold potations of water, but slight ones with sweet smells,
with cheese-bread or sleep, with music or dancing. Tertiary fevers are
cured by bleeding, by rhubarb or by a similar drawing remedy, or by
water soaked in the roots of plants, with purgative and sharp-tasting
qualities. But it is rarely that they take purgative medicines. Fevers
occurring every fourth day are cured easily by suddenly startling the
unprepared patients, and by means of herbs producing effects opposite to
the humours of this fever. All these secrets they told me in opposition
to their own wishes. They take more diligent pains to cure the lasting
fevers, which they fear more, and they strive to counteract these by the
observation of stars and of plants, and by prayers to God. Fevers
recurring every fifth, sixth, eighth or more days, you never find
whenever heavy humours are wanting.

They use baths, and moreover they have warm ones according to the Roman
custom, and they make use also of olive oil. They have found out, too, a
great many secret cures for the preservation of cleanliness and health.
And in other ways they labour to cure the epilepsy, with which they are
often troubled.

_G.M._ A sign this disease is of wonderful cleverness, for from it
Hercules, Scotus, Socrates, Callimachus, and Mahomet have suffered.

_Capt._ They cure by means of prayers to heaven, by strengthening the
head, by acids, by planned gymnastics, and with fat cheese-bread
sprinkled with the flour of wheaten corn. They are very skilled in
making dishes, and in them they put spice, honey, butter and many highly
strengthening spices, and they temper their richness with acids, so that
they never vomit. They do not drink ice-cold drinks nor artificial hot
drinks, as the Chinese do; for they are not without aid against the
humours of the body, on account of the help they get from the natural
heat of the water; but they strengthen it with crushed garlic, with
vinegar, with wild thyme, with mint, and with basil, in the summer or in
time of special heaviness. They know also a secret for renovating life
after about the seventieth year, and for ridding it of affliction, and
this they do by a pleasing and indeed wonderful