CAIUS. Other than the evil diet of the country, which de- stroy eth more meats and drinks, without all order, convenient time, reason, or necessity, than either Scotland, or all other countries under the sun, to the great annoyance of their own bodies and wits, hindrance of those which have need, and great dearth and scarcity in the commonwealth. Where- fore if Esculapius, the inventor of physick, the saver of men from death, and restorer to life, should return again to this world, he could not save these sorts of men." In corroboration of this, he remarks, " that those who had the dis- ease, sore with peril or death, were either men of wealth, ease, and welfare ; or of the poorer sort, such as were idle persons, good ale drinkers and tavern haunters — the laborious and thin dieted escaped." This curious English book the author afterwards revised, and put into a more scientific form, and into the Latin language, and published it in 1556, under the title De Ephemera Bri- tannicd. In this more enlarged treatise, he speaks more fully of the article of diet, digresses, and gives us a minute account of the methods employed in his day, of making beer and ale, and of the process of malting, concluding with a copious panegyric upon temperance, extracted from the ancients. With an ostentatious display of learning, he enumerates all the most trifling details of the mystery of brewing, and having deposited the nutritious beve- rage in casks in the cellar, concludes emphati- cally — Ila Ala Jit. He then proceeds to describe how Bera is made ; but we will not follow him into the minutiae of the fabrication of the thinner pota- c 2
