Dear Young Will,
Since twelfth night is upon us... I must ask you that has plagued my mind for near a score of years... Does eating beef really harm the wit? Or did it lack of beef make Sir Agucheek a twit?
Sincerely,
Cookey Monster
Dear Cookey Monster,
The consumption of flesshe, especially beef, can have many effects, or so my physician friend suggests. According to Doctor Helmut von der Frosch:
--I hadde a man named Ricardo who possessed all of the signes of erotomania (or erotic melancholia, amorous fever, love syckness). Ricardo sighed, wrote bad poetry in the imitation of Petrarch--comparing his beloved to the chaste moon on a cloudy night while mixing his metaphors and mangling his metre--and his humors were imbalanced. He would wax angry and then excitable and then sad and then lazy before growing angry again.
As I told Ricardo, "You have too much black bile--and you have too much heat without outlet for it." The consumption of flesshe can, when combined with other factors, dull the wyt. Of course, with yet other factors, too lyttle beefe will harm the soul of a rational man.
For one who possess'd an excess of heate, one should avoid hot climes, avoid spicy foodes and an excesse of wine, avoid music and love poetry and playes and other ydle entertainments. In regards to dining, one should engage in temperance and vary what flesshe and fishhe one consumes. Avoid softe beds and take up activity that will release pent up heat safely or rouse it if one is too cool in the bloode: hunting is the best recourse, medically speaking. Those who suffer an excess should also have a rigorous course of bleedyng, as Galen and other authoryties rightly recommend.--
Sadly, I am no master of physic myself. I suspect the answer to the question of beef lies in fynding the balance between too little and too much combined with a dose of reflecion upon one's nature. But not too much reflecion, nor too little.
Eternally Yours,
Will
