Akin to dirtiness is the pernicious custom of some, who, deaf to the calls of nature, defer going to stool, and suppress their urine a long time, to avoid interrupting their studies; not reflecting that many dreadful disorders spring from this source. For by too long a delay the secreted humours become too putrid, are attenuated, irritate the intestines or the bladder, vitiate the mucous matter, and sometimes occasion grievous disorders of the particular organ; the putrid matter being absorb’d by the vessels with which all the cavities of the body abound, pollutes the blood; and, which is still worse, the nerves become disused to obey the stimulus; nay, they sometimes, by too much tension, begin to grow paralytic; so that the expulsive force, for the voiding of excrements or urine, almost entirely ceases, and should every day be renew’d by art. Whilst the illustrious TYCHO BRAHE, riding in the same chariot with the emperor, suppress’d his urine, he pay’d for his ill-tim’d modesty by death; and I even now have under my care a man of learning, who by a long suppression of his urine became unable to contain it; nor can he void it when he thinks proper, but it runs from him night and day by drops. Retirement from all human society is likewise hurtful to them; for man, whom nature made for man, she intended also should be benefited by society. But nothing renders study and application more pernicious than the sadness that accompanies them: study is capable of clouding the temper of the happiest man with melancholy: if real and external causes of grief are added to this, the mind, overwhelm’d with so many strokes, at last sinks under them, and in its own ruin involves that of the body. Anxious cares are likewise hurtful; so that I can hardly conceive how great men, whom the difficulty of their undertakings kept in unremitting meditation, and whom the uncertainty of events fill’d with continual anxiety, could go through with such great undertakings. Nature endow’d CÆSAR, MAHOMET, CROMWELL, PAOLI, and some few more, with faculties which she refused other mortals, and which, notwithstanding, would scarce have enabled them to perform such great exploits without the assistance of sobriety and incessant action.