“I likewise,” he says with much candour, “did all that lay in my power to avoid those evils which we do not find it so easy to remove--melancholy, hatred, and other violent passions which appear to have the greatest influence over our bodies. However, I have not been able to guard so well against either one or the other kind of these disorders [passions] as not to suffer myself now and then to be hurried away by many, not to say all, of them; but I reaped one great benefit from my weakness--that of knowing by experience that these passions have, in the main, no great influence over bodies governed by the two foregoing rules of eating and drinking, and therefore can do them but very little harm, so that it may, with great truth, be affirmed that whoever observes these two capital rules is liable to very little inconvenience from any other excess. This Galen, who was an eminent physician, observed before me. He affirms that so long as he followed these two rules relative to eating and drinking (_perchè si guardava da quelli due della bocca_) he suffered but little from other disorders--so little that they never gave him above a day’s uneasiness. That what he says is true I am a living witness; and so are many others who know me, and have seen how often I have been exposed to heats and colds and such other disagreeable changes of weather, and have likewise seen me (owing to various misfortunes which have more than once befallen me) greatly disturbed in mind. For not only can they say of me that such mental disturbance has affected me little, but they can aver of many others who did not lead a frugal and regular life that such failure proved very prejudicial to them, among whom was a brother of my own and others of my family who, trusting to the goodness of their constitution, did not follow my way of living.” At the age of seventy a serious accident befel him, which to the vast majority of men so far advanced in life would probably have been fatal. His coach was overturned, and he was dragged a considerable distance along the road before the horses could be stopped. He was taken up insensible, covered with severe wounds and bruises and with an arm and leg dislocated, and altogether he was in so dangerous a state that his physicians gave him only three days to live. As a matter of course they prescribed bleeding and purging as the only proper and effectual remedies:--