Part 565

2. Gluttony is self-murder; though it kill not suddenly, it killeth surely; like the dropsy, which killeth as it filleth, by degrees.[405] Very many of the wisest physicians do believe that of those who overlive their childhood, there is scarce one of twenty, yea, or of a hundred that dieth, but gluttony or excess in eating or drinking is a principal cause of their death, though not the most immediate cause. It is thought to kill a hundred to one of all that die at age. And it will not let them die easily and quickly, but tormenteth them first with manifold diseases while they live. You eat more than nature can perfectly concoct, and because you feel it not trouble you or make you sick, you think it hurts you not; whereas it doth by degrees first alter and vitiate the temperament of the blood and humours, making it a crude, unconcocted, unnatural thing, unfit for the due nutrition of the parts; turning the nourishing mass into a burdensome, excrementitious mixture, abounding with saline or tartareous matter, and consisting more of a pituitous slime, or redundant serosity, than of that sweet, nutrimental milk of nature, quickened with those spirits and well-proportioned heat, which should make it fit to be the oil of life. And our candle either sparkleth away with salt, or runs away because there is some thief in it, or goeth out because the oil is turned into water, or presently wasteth and runs about through the inconsistent softness of its oil: hence it is that one part is tainted with corruption, and another consumeth as destitute of fit nutriment; and the vessels secretly obstructed by the grossness or other unfitness of the blood to run its circle and perform its offices, is the cause of a multitude of lamentable diseases. The frigid distempers of the brain, the soporous and comatous effects, the lethargy, carus, and apoplexy, the palsy, convulsion, epilepsy, vertigo, catarrhs, the head-ache, and oft the phrensy and madness, come all from these effects of gluttony and excess, which are made upon the blood and humours. The asthma usually, and the phthisis or consumption, and the pleurisy and peripneumony, and the hemoptoic passion, often come from hence. Yea the very syncopes or swooning, palpitations of the heart, and faintings, which men think rather come from weakness, do usually come either from oppression of nature by these secret excrements or putrilaginous blood, or else from a weakness contracted by the inaptitude of the blood to nourish us, being vitiated by excess. The loathing of meat and want of appetite is ordinarily from the crudities or distempers caused by this excess; yea, the very canine appetite which would still have more, is caused by a viciousness in the humours thus contracted. The pains of the stomach, vomitings, the cholera, hiccoughs, inflammations, thirsts, are usually from this cause. The wind cholic, the iliac passion, looseness, and fluxes, the tenesmus and ulcers, the worms and other troubles in those parts, are usually from hence. The obstructions of the liver, the jaundice, inflammations, abscesses and ulcers, schirrus, and dropsy, are commonly from hence. Hence also usually are inflammations, pains, obstructions, and schirrus of the spleen. Hence commonly is the stone, nephritic torments, and stoppages of urine, and ulcers of the reins and bladder. Hence commonly is the scorbute and most of the fevers which are found in the world, and bring such multitudes to the grave. Even those that immediately are caused by colds, distempers of the air or infections, are oft caused principally by long excess, which vitiateth the humours, and prepareth them for the disease. Hence also are gouts and hysterical affects, and diseases of the eyes and other exterior parts. So that we may well say that gluttony enricheth landlords, filleth the churchyards, and hasteneth multitudes untimely to their ends.[406] Perhaps you will say that the most temperate have diseases: to which experience teacheth me to answer, that usually children are permitted to be voracious and gluttonous, either in quantity or in quality, eating raw fruits and things unwholesome; and so when gluttony hath bred the disease, or laid in the matter, then all the temperance that can be used is little enough to keep it under all their life after. And abundance that have been brought to the doors of death by excess, have been preserved after many years to a competent age by abstinence, and many totally freed from their diseases. Read Cornaro's Treatise of himself, and Lessius, and Sir William Vaughan, &c. (Though yet I persuade none without necessity to their exceeding strictness.) Judge now what a murderer gluttony is, and what an enemy to mankind.