Healths improvement: or, Rules comprizing and discovering the nature, method, and manner of preparing all sorts of food used in this nation. Written by that ever famous Thomas Muffett, Doctor in Physick: corrected and enlarged by Christopher Bennet, Doctor in Physick, and fellow of the Colledg of Physitians in London.

Causes of good Milk.

Also it is much material to the goodness of milk, to have speciall regard to the Diet of those creatures whose milk we use, or chuse for our children. Galen reporteth that a friends child of his, having lost his good Nurse by an untimely death, was put out to another: who in time of dearth being forced to feed chiefly upon fruit, and roots, and Acorne bread, infected her child (as she her self was infected) with much grevious and filthy scabs. And I pray you what else is the cause, that many children nursed in the Country are so subject to frets, sharpness of urine and the stone; but that their Nurses

for the most part eat rye bread strong of the leaven, and hard cheese, and drink nothing but muddy and new Ale? It is also recorded, that a young man sick of a Consumption, used the milk of a goat to his great good, so long as it fed in his own field; but afterward feeding in another field where store of Scammony grew, and some wild spourge, he fell into a deadly scowring and felt no nourishment.

Furthermore care is to be taken of their health, that give us milk; for as an unclean and pocky nurse (which woful experience dayly proveth) infecteth most sound and lively children; so likewise a clean sound and health∣ful nurse recovereth a sickly and impotent child. Nay (which is more) no man can justly doubt, that a childs mind is answerable to his nurses milk and manners; for what made Iupiter and Aegystus so lecherous, but that * 1.1they were chiefly fed with goats milk? What made Romulus and Polyphemus so cruel, but that they were * 1.2nursed by She-wolves? What made Pelias (Tyrus and Neptunes son) so bruitish, but that he was nursed by an unhappy mare? Is it any marvel also, that Giles the Abbot (as the Saint-register writeth) continued so long * 1.3the love of a solitary life in woods and deserts when three years together he suckt a Doe? What made Dr. Cajus in his last sickness so peevish and so full of frets at Cambridge, when he suckt one woman (whom I spare to name) froward of conditions and of bad diet; and contrariwise so quiet and well, when he suckt another of contrary disposition? verily the diversity of their milks and conditions, which being contrary one to the other, wrought also in him that sucked them contrary effects.

Now having shewed what milk is best, and how to be chosen, let us consider how it is to be taken and used

of us. First therefore if any naturally loath it (as Pe∣trus * 1.4Aponensis did from the day of his birth) it cannot possibly give him any good nourishment, but perhaps very much hurt in offending nature. If contrariwise any * 1.5with Philinus love nothing else, or with the poor Bizo∣nians can get no other meat, or with the Tartarians and Arabians feed most often and willingly on milk: let them all remember these three lessons.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Politianus in Nutricia.
• * 1.2

  Syl. p••et. l. 14 Aelian. lib. 12. var. hist.
• * 1.3

  Marulus. lib. 4 cap. 2.
• * 1.4

  Jo. Mat. a Grad. c. de appetitu.
• * 1.5

  Athen. l. 2. c. 2 Guagninus in Tart. Cael. l▪ b ••8. cap. 2. A. L.