Today I read the drinkable liquids section. You know what else is bad for you? WATER. Especially if it is from a moat. Don’t drink the moat water.
And then there’s this:
All black wines, over-hot, compound, strong thick drinks, as Muscadine, Malmsey, Alicant, Rumney, Brownbastard, Metheglen, and the like, of which they have thirty several kinds in Muscovy, all such made drinks are hurtful in this case, to such as are hot, or of a sanguine choleric complexion, young, or inclined to head-melancholy.
Oh NO. I can live without moat water, but no wine? No more Malmsey or Rumney?! Curse my sanguine choleric complexion.
He rambles on a bit here about two Dutchmen who drank a lot, and then there is more:
Yet notwithstanding all this, to such as are cold, or sluggish melancholy, a cup of wine is good physic, and so doth Mercurialis grant, _consil. 25_, in that case, if the temperature be cold,as to most melancholy men it is, wine is much commended, if it be moderately used.
PHEW. I actually wrote PHEW in the margin of my book right there.
This post is part of a long, tedious, and very illustrated read-along of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. More info here and follow along on Facebook here. Illustrations posted via devon_isadevon on Instagram.