change in any great point of diet, and if necessity inforce it,
fit the rest to it. For it is a secret in nature and state, that it is
safer to change many things than one. Examine thy customs of diet,
sleep, exercise, apparel, and the like; and try, in any thing thou
shalt judge hurtful, to discontinue it by little and little; but so,
as if thou dost find any inconvenience by the change, thou come back
to it again: for it is hard to distinguish that which is generally
held good and wholesome, from that which is good particularly, and fit
for thine own body.

To be free-minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and of
sleep and of exercise, is one of the best precepts of long lasting. As
for the passions and studies of the mind; avoid envy; anxious fears,
anger fretting inwards; subtle and knotty inquisitions; joys and
exhilarations in excess; sadness not communicated. Entertain hopes;
mirth rather than joy; variety of delights, rather than surfeit of
them; wonder and admiration, and therefore novelties; studies that
fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects, as histories,
fables, and contemplations of nature. If you fly physic in health
altogether, it will be too strange for your body when you shall need
it. If you make it too familiar, it will work no extraordinary effect
when sickness cometh. I commend rather some diet for certain seasons,
than frequent use of physic, except it be grown into a custom. For
those diets alter the body more, and trouble it less.

Despise no new accident in your body, but ask opinion of it. In
sickness, respect health principally; and in health, action. For those
that put their bodies to endure in health, may in most sicknesses,
which are not very sharp, be cured only with diet and tendering.
Celsus[53] could never have spoken it as a physician, had he not been
a wise man withal, when he giveth it for one of the great precepts of
health and lasting, that a man do vary and interchange contraries, but
with an inclination to the more benign extreme: use fasting and full
eating, but rather full eating; watching and sleep, but rather sleep;
sitting and exercise, but rather exercise; and the like. So shall
nature be cherished, and yet taught masteries. Physicians are some of
them so pleasing and conformable to the humor of the patient, as they
press not the true cure of the disease; and some other are so regular
in proceeding according to art for the disease, as they respect n