Others say, that it is better for a man to suffer every year three or four returns of his usual disorders, such as the gout, pain in the side, and the like, than be tormented the whole year by not indulging his appetite, and eating every thing his palate likes best; since, by a good regimen alone, he is sure to get the better of such attacks. To this I answer, that our natural heat growing less and less, as we advance in years, no regimen can retain virtue sufficient to conquer the malignity, with which disorders of repletion are ever attended; so that he must die, at last, of these periodical disorders, because they abridge life, as health prolongs it. Others pretend, that it is much better to live ten years less, than not indulge one's appetite. To this I answer, that longevity ought to be highly valued by men of parts; as to others, it is no great matter if it is not duly prized by them, since they are a disgrace to mankind, so that their death is rather of service to the public. But it is a great misfortune, that men of bright parts should be cut off in that manner, since he, who is already a cardinal, might, perhaps, by living to eighty, attain the papal crown; and in the state, many, by living some years extraordinary, may acquire the ducal dignity; and so in regard to letters, by which a man may rise so as to be considered as a god upon earth; and the like in every other profession. There are others, who, though their stomachs become weaker and weaker with respect to digestion, as they advance in years, cannot, however, be brought to retrench the quantity of their food, nay they rather increase it. And, because they find themselves unable to digest the great quantity of food, with which they must load their stomachs, by eating twice in the four and twenty hours, they make a resolution to eat but once, that the long interval between one meal and the other may enable them to eat at one sitting as much as they used to do in two: thus they eat till their stomachs, overburthened with much food, pall, and sicken, and change the superfluous food into bad humours, which kill a man before his time. I never knew any person, who led that kind of life, live to be very old. All these old men I have been speaking of would live long, if, as they advanced in years, they lessened the quantity of their food, and eat oftener, but little at a time; for old stomachs cannot digest large quantities of food; old men changing, in that respect, to children, who eat several times in the four and twenty hours.