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CHAP. X. DIRECTIONS IN A PESTILENCE.
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There are some rules necessary to be observed in a pestilence by a man, who continues in good health, but cannot however be secure. At that time it is proper to take journies and to sail. When that can’t be done, to use gestation, gentle walking in the open air before the heat of the day, and unction with the same moderation; and as has been directed above, to avoid fatigue, crudity, cold, heat, and venery, and confine himself to a strict regimen. If he feel any heaviness hanging about his body, then he is neither to rise in the morning, nor walk barefooted at any time, much less after meat or the bath; nor to vomit either with an empty stomach, or after supper: neither should the belly be purged; and if it grow loose of itself, it must be restrained. Abstinence should rather be observed, if the body is plethoric. Also it is proper to avoid the bath, sweating, sleeping in the middle of the day, especially after meat; which by the way, it is more convenient to take once a day, and that sparingly, lest it should occasion crudity: every other day to drink alternately water and wine. These rules being carefully observed, as little alteration as possible should be made in the usual course of life. And as they are to be practised in every pestilence, so principally in that, which is occasioned by southerly winds. And the very same precautions are necessary for those that take journies, when they have set out from home in a sickly season of the year, or have come into sickly countries. But if the nature of any engagements should prevent the observance of the other rules, yet it will be necessary to live abstemiously; and thus to change from wine to water, and from that to wine again, in the manner that has been prescribed above.