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their prime and leave them when their season is past.’ (Q.) ‘What sayst thou of drinking water?’ (A.) ‘Drink it not in large quantities nor by gulps, or it will give thee the headache and cause divers kinds of harm; neither drink it immediately after the bath nor after copulation or eating (except it be after the lapse of fifteen minutes for a young and forty for an old man) or waking from sleep.’ (Q.) ‘What of drinking wine?’ (A.) ‘Doth not the prohibition suffice thee in the Book of God the Most High, where He saith, “Verily, wine and casting lots and idols and divining arrows are an abomination of the fashion of the Devil: shun them, so surely shall ye thrive.”[1] And again, “If they ask thee of wine and casting lots, say, ‘In them are great sin and advantages to mankind, but the sin of them is greater than the advantage.’”[2] Quoth the poet:
O wine-bibber, art not ashamed and afraid To drink of a thing that thy Maker forbade?
Come, put the cup from thee and mell with it not, For wine and its drinker God still doth upbraid.
And quoth another:
I drank the sweet sin till my wit went astray: ’Tis ill drinking of that which doth reason away.
As for the useful qualities that are therein, it disperses gravel from the kidneys and strengthens the bowels, banishes care, moves to generosity and preserves health and digestion. It assains the body, expels disease from the joints, purifies the frame of corrupt humours, engenders cheerfulness and gladdens and keeps up the natural heat. It contracts the bladder, strengthens the liver and removes obstructions, reddens the face, clears away cobwebs from the brain and defers gray hairs. In short, had not God (to whom belong might and majesty)
