The three feasts of health: milk, bread, and salt. The three medicines of the physicians of Myddvai: water, honey, and labour. Moderate exercise is health. Three moderations will produce long life; in food, labour, and meditation. Whoso breaks not his fast in May, let him consider himself with the dead. He who sees fennel and gathers it not, is not a man, but a devil. If thou desirest to die, eat cabbage in August. Whatever quantity thou eatest, drink thrice. God will send food to washed hands. Drink water like an ox, and wine like a king. One egg is economy, two is gentility, three is greediness, and the fourth is wastefulness. If persons knew how good a hen is in January, none would be left on the roost. The cheese of sheep, the milk of goats, and the butter of cows are the best. The three victuals of health: honey, butter, and milk. The three victuals of sickness: flesh meat, ale, and vinegar. Take not thy coat off before Ascension day. If thou wilt become unwell, wash thy head and go to sleep. In pottage without herbs there is neither goodness nor nourishment. If thou wilt die, eat roast mutton and sleep soon after it. If thou wilt eat a bad thing, eat roast hare. Mustard after food. He who cleans his teeth with the point of his knife may soon clean them with the haft. A dry cough is the trumpet of death.” One of the laws of Howel Dda permitted divorce for so trifling a cause as an unsavoury or disagreeable breath.[676] Poppies bruised in wine were used to induce sleep. For agues the treatment was to write in three apples on three separate days an invocation to the Trinity; “on the third day he will recover.” Saffron was used for many complaints; it is a drug still largely used by the poor, who have unbounded faith in it, but it is almost inert. If a person lost his reason, he was ordered to take primrose juice, “and he will indeed recover.” There were regular tables of lucky and unlucky days for bleeding. Fennel juice was supposed to act as a sort of anti-fat, and the roots of thistles were given as a purgative. If a snake should crawl into a man’s mouth, the patient was to take camomile powder in wine. An irritable man was to drink celery juice; “it will produce joy.” As we might have expected, the leek was supposed to have many virtues; wives who desired children were told to eat leeks. Leek juice and woman’s milk was good for whooping cough. The juice was also used for deafness, heart-burn, headache, and boils. Mustard purifies the brain, is an antidote to the bite of an adder, is good for colic, loss of hair, palsy, and many other things. To ascertain the fate of a sick person, bruise violets and apply them to the eyebrows; “if he sleep, he will live, but if not he will die.”