great Mogul's Court by land to Pekin, which Riccius contends to be the
same with Cambulu in Cataia. In Scandia their bread is usually dried
fish, and so likewise in the Shetland Isles; and their other fare, as
in Iceland, saith [1449]Dithmarus Bleskenius, butter, cheese, and fish;
their drink water, their lodging on the ground. In America in many
places their bread is roots, their meat palmettos, pinas, potatoes,
&c., and such fruits. There be of them too that familiarly drink
[1450]salt seawater all their lives, eat [1451]raw meat, grass, and
that with delight. With some, fish, serpents, spiders: and in divers
places they [1452]eat man's flesh, raw and roasted, even the Emperor
[1453]Montezuma himself. In some coasts, again, [1454]one tree yields
them cocoanuts, meat and drink, fire, fuel, apparel; with his leaves,
oil, vinegar, cover for houses, &c., and yet these men going naked,
feeding coarse, live commonly a hundred years, are seldom or never
sick; all which diet our physicians forbid. In Westphalia they feed
most part on fat meats and worts, knuckle deep, and call it
[1455]cerebrum Iovis: in the Low Countries with roots, in Italy frogs
and snails are used. The Turks, saith Busbequius, delight most in fried
meats. In Muscovy, garlic and onions are ordinary meat and sauce, which
would be pernicious to such as are unaccustomed to them, delightsome to
others; and all is [1456]because they have been brought up unto it.
Husbandmen, and such as labour, can eat fat bacon, salt gross meat,
hard cheese, &c., (O dura messorum illa), coarse bread at all times, go
to bed and labour upon a full stomach, which to some idle persons would
be present death, and is against the rules of physic, so that custom is
all in all. Our travellers find this by common experience when they
come in far countries, and use their diet, they are suddenly offended,
[1457]as our Hollanders and Englishmen when they touch upon the coasts
of Africa, those Indian capes and islands, are commonly molested with
calentures, fluxes, and much distempered by reason of their fruits.
[1458]Peregrina, etsi suavia solent vescentibus perturbationes insignes
adferre, strange meats, though pleasant, cause notable alterations and
distempers. On the other side, use or custom mitigates or makes all
good again. Mithridates by often use, which Pliny wonders at, was able
to drink poison; and a maid, as Curtius records, sent to Alexander from
King Porus, was brought up with poison from her infancy. The Turks,
saith Bellonius, lib. 3. c. 15, eat opium familiarly, a dram at once,
which we dare not take in grains. [1459]Garcias ab Horto writes of one
whom he saw at Goa in the East Indies, that took ten drams of opium in
three days; and yet consulto loquebatur, spake understandingly, so much
can custom do. [1460] Theophrastus speaks of a shepherd that could eat
hellebore in substance. And therefore Cardan concludes out of Galen,
Consuetudinem utcunque ferendam, nisi valde malam. Custom is howsoever
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