Healthy Ways of Living

Hebrew

If one does the following six things, he will die immediately: if one comes weary from a journey, let blood, entered a bathhouse, drank and became drunk, slept on the floor, and had intercourse. R. Yoḥanan said: [Only] he who did them in that order. Abaye said: In that order, he can die; not in that order, he can be weakened. [ . . . ]

There are eight [activities] that in large quantities are harmful but in small quantities are beneficial. And these are they: road [travel], the “way of the world” [sexual intercourse], wealth, work, wine, sleep, hot baths, and bloodletting.

Eight [activities] diminish the semen. And these are they: salt, hunger, a scab, weeping, and sleeping on the ground, and gadgadniyot [perhaps clover] and kashut [perhaps dodder] not [eaten] in its season. Bloodletting below [the navel is] twice [as harmful].

Translated by Markham J. Geller and Lennart Lehmhaus.