Gargantua and Pantagruel
Among the famous galaxy of philological stars of the sixteenth century, the men who honored their age, we may enumerate Montaigne, Amyot, Calvin, Marot, Michel de l’Hospital, Etienne Dolet,101 and the one great genius who eclipsed them all, the immortal Rabelais, who was at once physician, philosopher, politician, philanthropist and litterateur; in other words, he illustrated science and letters by his erudition, and merits a place in the ranks of glorious Frenchmen and among the list of benefactors of humanity.
Son of a wine-house keeper, the owner of the “Lamprey Tavern,” at Chinon, he took orders in the Church, following the custom of the epoch, because he wished to devote his life to study. During some years he led the life of a monk, and was a close student of Latin and Greek literature; to the latter especially he owes his concise, nervous, but virile style, resembling that of Aristophanes. But soon fatigued with religious hypocrisy, whose victim he refused to become, he left the Cordelier and Benedictine Orders and sought refuge in the charming village of Leguge, that his intimate friend, the Bishop of Maillezais, had placed at his disposal.
Here, Rabelais gave himself up with ardor to the study of belle lettres and science, only meeting socially the freethinkers, with whom he discussed those great philosophic questions that had just commenced to occupy the minds of the really thoughtful. Such superior men as Estissic, Bonaventure Desperriers, Clement Marot, Jean Bouchet, Guillaume, Bude, and Louis Berquin were the friends of Rabelais.
Etienne Dolet, the poet, philosopher and celebrated printer, who laid down his life in opposition to monarchial and religious tyranny, was the very particular friend and adviser of Francois Rabelais, and one day traced for him the programme of a book destined, to his mind, to unveil the vices and console the mass of victims who suffered from social iniquities.
“Yes,” responded Rabelais, in answer,102 “a book truly humane must be addressed to all. The time has arrived when philosophy must leave the clouds and shine like the sun for the entire universe. We must, from this hour, suck from the breast of truth for the ignorant and learned. I will see what is in me, and write a book of philosophy, which shall instruct, console and amuse the brave vintners of Deviniere and the jolly wine-drinkers of Chinon, as well as the learned. So well shall this be done that Princes, Kings, Emperors and paupers may drink gayly at one table together. The truth, no matter how hard to reach, and rugged though its nature, must be related as truly as that found in God’s book; and it shall be presented in a living form, so human and natural that it will be accepted by all the world, and awaken in the soul of mankind a common thought. What use is there, unless supported on eternal conscience, to recount to good and true men the histories that they love to have related, histories they themselves have made? For instance, the ‘History of Giants,’ so much printed in our age, since the divine art of bookmaking seems so well adapted to an end. Through all of France I hear told the dreadful prowess of the enormous giant Gargantua; it is necessary to lay violent hands on this history, include in it all the world, and hand it back thus newly created to the good people who invented the tale. Here is the true secret; we derive from the humble class of citizens their plain and simple ideas, and give them back ornamented with all the good things that the study of philosophy brings us. The rustic thoughts of the villager, such is the point I wish to attain, in divulging treasures hidden in secret up to the present time by the enemies of light.” Such was the plot conceived by the immortal Rabelais, which soon served as a basis for “Gargantua and Pantagruel.” Thus, under the familiar form of an impossible and exaggerated fictitious history, following the advice of Dolet, our author proposed to attack in his book all the hypocritical prejudices, superannuated ideas, together with the political and religious superstitions of the Middle Ages;103 he thus paved a way for a Revolution, that must some day be accomplished in social morals, to the profit of science and reason. In order to change the control of orthodox and monarchial guardians, it was necessary to resort to stratagems, to dissimulate in his plans of attack and use the ideas and language of the superior classes. He had often heard the aristocracy use vulgar and obscene expressions, and he was to put these back in the mouths of his characters, so as to depict their unrestrained passions, intrigues, amours, the luxury of their dress, their penchant for disputation, their tendency to sensuality; all these were to be part of his projected romance, which was not to be understood as irony even in the sense of its paraboles.
The official sanction to publication was to be obtained by making the authorities believe that the author was only a gay and witty philosopher, a prince of good fellows whose doctrines were not dangerous to the continuance of the nobility and the prerogatives of the aristocracy; whose ideas presented nothing subversive, neither as to the secular power nor to sacerdotal domination. Meantime, the Sorbonnists, whom Rabelais had the impudence to rail at, doubted perhaps the position reserved for them in such a satire, as for several years previous they had been secretly hostile to him, which was a serious matter, considering their influence.
The condemnation to the stake of Louis Berquin, as a propagator of reform ideas; the pursuit of Desperriers, accused of Atheism; and the red danger-signals waving on every hand, determined Rabelais, before publishing his work, to quit Touraine and to go to Montpellier, where he demanded protection of the Faculty. His natural pronounced taste for the natural sciences, the avidity with which he continually extended the circle of his knowledge, and, above all, the liberty of University life, had long before attracted the former monk towards the study of medicine.
It was under these conditions that Rabelais left Longey to go to Montpellier, where his reputation for erudition, keen wit and most perfect good nature had long before preceded him.
The reading of all the classical Greek authors, and principally Aristotle, had initiated him in the natural sciences to that extent that he was ready to receive his degree of “Bachelor in Medicine” shortly after his arrival at the University, under the following circumstances: He had followed the crowd of students who read theses in the public halls, and thus mingled with the auditors at the meeting; the discussion was on the subject of botany. The arguments of the orators appeared so weak to Rabelais that he soon manifested signs of impatience by a very sarcastic remark that drew the attention of the Dean to the newcomer. He was invited to enter the enclosure reserved for doctors who debated, but excused himself on the grounds that his opinions would not be proper to enunciate before such a gathering of savants, and that he was, besides, only a Bachelor; but, being pressed by the crowd, who seemed pleased by his appearance and manner, he treated the question under discussion in such a masterly manner, and with an eloquence so unequalled, that rounds of applause greeted him on every side; his knowledge of the subject seemed unbounded. The Faculty was so pleased that he was immediately honored with the Baccalaureat. This was in November, 1530.
Rabelais had not taken his doctor’s bonnet when his great medical talent was fully known and appreciated by the professors of the Medical Department of Montpellier, where his winning grace, good humor, and communicative gayety made him friends everywhere.
Two of his boon companions at the University were Antoine Saporta, who afterwards became Dean of the Faculty, and Guillaume Rondelet; with these men he inaugurated at Montpellier theatrical representations with a medical leaning. He wrote some celebrated farces, among others “The Dumb Wife” (La Femme Mute), in which he himself assumed a leading role—a farce which is related, as to plot, in “Pantagruel,” by Panurge, under the title of “History of a Good Husband who Espoused a Dumb Wife.” The following is an extract: “Now, the good husband wished that his wife might speak, and, thanks to the skill of a doctor and surgeon, who cut a piece from under the tongue, the woman commenced to talk, and she talked and talked with recovered speech, as though to make up for lost time, until the husband returned to the doctor for a remedy to keep his wife’s mouth shut. The physician responded that he had proper remedies for making women speak, but no remedy had ever been discovered to keep a wife’s tongue quiet. The only thing he could suggest to the husband was for the latter to become deaf in order not to hear the woman’s voice. The old reprobate submitted to an operation in order to be deaf, and, when the physician demanded his fee for professional services, the husband answered that he was too deaf to hear anything.” Then the doctor, in order to make the man pay his bill, strove to restore his hearing by forcing drugs down the husband’s throat, whereupon both husband and wife fell on the physician and surgeon and so beat both medical men with clubs that they were left for dead. This farce was played at Montpellier by a company of medical students, and enjoyed an immense run of success. It was this farce that helped Moliere out in one of his scenes in his famous play “Medecin malgre lui.”
His literary productions, strange to say, did not injure his scientific work meantime. During the time he resided at Montpellier he published a translation of some of the works of Hippocrates and Galen, and also commenced his “Pantagruel,” in which medical history may find some valuable documents, for he showed himself to be in every line not only a physician but a philosopher.104 We will not return to this, as it is too long, and would take an infinity of time to recall his anatomical erudition, and it is needless to say he dissected as well as he wrote. A very just conception of his style is obtained from the description of the combat between Brother John and the soldiers of Pichrocole, who had invaded the Abbey of Seville, a description which is terminated in these droll lines: “Some died without speaking, others spoke without dying; some died in speaking, others spoke in dying.”
In all his chapters it is easy to perceive that Rabelais never once forgot he was a physician, and consequently a philanthropist, for could the author of “Pantagruel” be otherwise? He pleased all those who suffered, especially gouty patients, to whom he dedicated a portion of his work. He states, at the beginning of his prologue, to Gargantua, “This is for those who love gayety, for laughter is a proper attribute of man.”
It was this same sentiment of humanity which led Rabelais to give disinterested services to syphilitics, that unfortunate class of sick whom the majority of doctors disdained to treat in the sixteenth century. In 1538 he went to Paris and made great efforts to reform the treatment to which such patients were barbarously subjected; the number of such sufferers was great. He works this fact into the description that Epistemon gives of Hell, “where, not counting Pope Sextus, there are five millions of poxed devils, for there is as much pox in one world as in the other.” But Rabelais, alas for modern theories, did not fish in the ether with hook and line for microbes, while holding the white hands of Venus.
It was Rabelais, then, who pleaded the cause of these poor poxed patients, attacked by mercury as well as the syphilis, and who exclaims: “How often I have seen them when they were anointed and greased with mercurial ointment; their faces as sharp as a butcher knife and their teeth rattling like the key-board of a broken-down organ or the creaking motion of an old spinnet.”
It is evident he employed sweating baths, however, since it is evidently proved by that passage from the redoubtable “Pantagruel’s” nativity: “For all sweat is salt, as is evidenced if you but taste your own sweat, or, a better experiment still, try that of pox patients when they are being sweated.”
We know, besides, that G. Torella, affirms that “the best methods of curing pox is to make the patient sweat near a stove or hot oven for fifteen consecutive days, while fasting meantime.”
Syphilis, as already remarked, was exceedingly common in the sixteenth century, as will be found by referring to the writings of Italian and French specialists of that epoch. Rabelais corroborates this fact, for he frequently alludes to this malady in his works; according to our illustrious author great personages were not exempt from the disease, not even the Pope and the Sacred College of Rome, not even kings and princes, in fact all the nobility, for we read in chapter seventeen of “Pantagruel”: “Moreover, Pope Sextus gave me fifteen hundred pounds of rents on his domains for having cured His Holiness of la bosse chancreuse, which so much tormented him that he feared to be crippled all his life.” Now, a protuberant chancre was nothing but an inguinal bubo, whose suppuration was considered as a favorable symptom of the disease.
Even the good “Pantagruel” did not escape, more than others, the fashionable contagion of his time, for we read: “Pantagruel was taken sick, and his stomach was so disordered that he could neither eat nor drink; and as misfortunes never come singly, he was seized with a clap, which tormented him more than you would think, but his physician succored him well, and by means of drugs, lenitive and diuretic, they caused him to urinate away his misfortune (pisser son malheur). And his urine was so hot that since that time it has never grown cold, and there are different places in France where he left his mark, now called the hot baths, as, for instance, at Cauterets, Limoux, Dax, Balaruc, Neris, and Bourbon-Lancy.”105
The chapters of Rabelais’ famous book which most evidence his medical knowledge are those discussing the perplexities of Panurge on the question of marriage. Pantagruel has long commented pro and con, but has not fully made up his mind; he does not demand a solution of the matrimonial problem from Gods, dreams, nor from the oracles of Sibyls. He, however, consents to take council from Herr Trippa, allegorical name bestowed by Rabelais on the German Camilla Agrippa, of Neterheim, a philosopher and physician best known by his books on alchemy, magic, and occult science. This savant proposed to unveil our heroes’ future destiny by “pyromancy, æromancy, hydromancy, gyromancy”; or, better still, by “necromancy I will make a spirit rise from the dead, like Apollonius of Tyana to Achilles, like the Witch of Endor to Saul, who will tell you all, even as Erichto, dead and rotten in body, rose in spirit and predicted to Pompey the issue of the battle of Pharsalia.”106
Panurge always refuses, but finishes by taking advice from a priest, physician, lawyer, and philosopher, who elucidate the question. The consultation with the physician Rondibilis, that is to say, the author’s friend Guillaume Rondelet, fellow student of Rabelais at the University of Montpellier, is particularly interesting to all doctors by reason of the anatomical and physiological arguments.
The good physician Rondibilis thus responds to Panurge on the question of marriage:
“You say that you feel within yourself the sharp pricking stings of sensuality. I find in our Faculty of Medicine, and we found our opinion on the ideas enunciated by the ancient Platonists, that carnal concupiscence is controlled in five manners.
“Imprimis, by wine; for intemperance in wine makes the blood cold, slackens up the cords, dissolves the nerves, dissipates the generative seed, stupefies the senses, perverts muscular movement; which weaknesses are all impediments to the act of generation. Hence it is that Bacchus, God of tipplers, bousers, and drunkards, is always painted beardless and dressed in a woman’s habit, like unto a thing effeminate or a eunuch. You know full well the antique proverb, i.e., that Venus is chilled without the society of Ceres and Bacchus.”
These reflections on the general effects of alcohol on the nervous system are very just. As to its particular effects on the function of generation, it is admitted by all hygienists that alcohol taken occasionally in excess excites venereal desires, but when taken habitually it weakens the generative functions. Amyot remarks that “those who drink much wine are slothful in performing the generative act, and their seed are good for nothing, as a rule.”
Rondibilis told Panurge the truth. Let us now see what other advice he gave his patient, and also note the methods by which he proposed to secure the best possible completion of the conjugal act.
“Secondly, the fervency of lust is abated by means of certain drugs and plants, which make the taker cold-blooded towards women; in other words, unfit him for the act of copulation. Such are the water lily, agnus castor, willow twigs, hemp stalks, tamarisk, mandrake, gnat flower, hemlock, and others; the which entering the human body by their elementary virtues and specific properties freeze and destroy the prolific germinal fluid, and obstruct the generative spirit instead of leading it to those passages and conduits designed for its reception by Nature, and, by preventing expulsion, prevent man from undertaking the feat of amorous dalliance.”
We will not enter into a discussion of the anaphrodisiac value of the plants mentioned by Rondibilis. We still recognize the soothing properties of Agnus Castus and vitex, or monk’s powder, as it is sometimes called; also that of belladonna, hemlock, digitalis, lupulin, camphor, and hempseed; as for tamarack and willow bark, their virtues are at least doubtful.
But from this passage from Rabelais we must conclude that the therapeutic uses of plants was already well known in the sixteenth century.
Again says Doctor Rondibilis: “Passion or lechery is subdued by hard labor and continual toiling, which makes such a dissolution in the whole body that the blood has neither time nor leisure to spare for seminal resudations or superfluity of the third concoction. Nature particularly reserves itself, deeming it much more necessary to conserve the individual rather than to multiply the human species. Thus the chaste Diana hunted incessantly. Thus the tired and overworked are said to be ‘castrated.’ We continually see semi-impotency among athletes. In this manner wrote Hippocrates in his great work, ‘Liber de Aere, Aqua, et Locis’: ‘There is in Scythia a tribe which has been more impotent than eunuchs to venereal desires, because these people live continually on horseback and hard work. To the contrary, idleness, the mother of luxury, begets sexual passion.’”
There is no necessity for long commentaries to demonstrate that manual labor and active physical exercise lessen the natural tendency to erotic ideas. The workingman and peasant are, as all the world knows, less given to the passion of love than the idle and luxurious of the cities. And the reasons given above by the Middle Age physicians are to-day admitted by all physiological writers.
But let us continue the advice of Rondibilis:
“Fervent study diminishes the erotic tendency, for under such conditions there is an incredible resolution of the spirits, so that they never rest from carrying on a generative resolution. When we contemplate the form of a man attentive to his studies we shall see all the arteries of the brain tied down as though with a cord, in order to furnish him spirits sufficient to keep filled the ventricles of common sense, imagination, apprehension, memory, co-ordination,” etc.
These rather vague and imperfect physiological explanations are open to discussion, but we all are aware that an excess of work, of intellectual labor applied to science, letters, or arts, is recognized to-day as a cause for weakening of venereal desires and the forerunner of impotency.
Again says Rondibilis: “As to the venereal act, again: I am of the opinion that the desire is subdued by the methods resorted to by the Hermits of Thebaide, who macerate their bodies so as to quell sensuality; this they do twenty-five or thirty times a day, to reduce the rebellion of the flesh.”
This is to say that a certain cause of impotence consists in an excess of genital apparatus, no matter of what variety; and we will add what the physician of Montpellier has not mentioned, that this maceration, which was nothing else than masturbation, superinduced spermatorrhœa, the morbid effects of which, on the human economy, are well known.
It is unnecessary to follow our Master Rondibilis in all his dissertations regarding the anatomical and moral imperfections of women, which he attributes to the misleading of Nature’s ordinary good sense, which he thinks “molded women more for the delectation of man and the perpetuity of the species rather than to secure perfection in the individual.” One thing is certain, that is, that he speaks with much physiological spirit, and that the amiable Panurge is so enchanted with the learned talk of Doctor Rondibilis that he does not forget to pay him a consultation fee, for, says the veracious chronicles, “Approaching him he put in his hand, without saying a word, four nobles a la rose, the which Rondibilis accepted gracefully.” These coins were made of fine gold, and struck off in 1334 by Edward III., of England. They had on one side the figure of a ship, and on the other a rose, arms of the Houses of York and Lancaster. This consultation was royally paid for in money of the Realm.
If we study Rabelais closely we find he was a contagionist of pronounced type, and believed in no other prophylactic against pestilence except flight from the contaminated country. This is what he makes his character “Pantagruel” do when the latter was in a village “which he found most pleasant to dwell in, had not the plague chased him out.” In another passage our author remarks: “The cause of plague is a stinking and infecting exhalation.” It must be added, however, that the plague was endemic at this epoch, and people, on the word of prophets, attributed the cause to divine wrath. The roads were crowded with pilgrims going to make vows and prayers at the chapel of Saint Sebastian. How often had Rabelais endeavored to combat these superstitions! As a proof of this let us make another short quotation from the great satirist: “False prophets announce this lie! They thus blaspheme the Just and the Saints of God, whom they make out to be demons of cruelty. These canting hypocrites, the clergy, preach in my native Province that Saint Anthony gives erysipelas, Saint Eutrope gives dropsy, Saint Gildas makes people insane, and Saint Gildus perpetuates the gout. I am amazed that our glorious King allows these impostors to preach such scandalous lies in his realm; and they should be punished rather than those who, by magic or otherwise, may bring the plague into the country. The plague only kills the body; but clerical impostors poison human souls.”
It required a grand amount of courage to hold and express such opinions in the sixteenth century, in the very face of the butchers of the Inquisition. This courage was not acquired by Rabelais from his philosophic studies nor his religious ideas; it was inspired by scientific convictions, of which the Holy Office dared not demand a retraction, as it did in the case of Galileo. For the Papacy, from the earliest periods of time, has always avoided controversy with medical science. And we may recall here the device that Rabelais inscribed in his heart, as on the first page of his books: “To Doctor Francois Rabelais and to his friends.” He was proud of his medical title, and he considered practice (and we mention this fact inasmuch as an ancient writer has claimed he did not belong to our glorious profession) as a sort of magistral and sacerdotal duty, and demanded, as the first condition for making a doctor, that the candidate for the honored medical degree should have a healthy heart.
It was for his patients’ edification that he composed portions of his books. He wished to calm their senses by revealing to them the great spectacle of the world; and its purpose is all apparent, i.e., to inspire among mankind a love for humanity; having no other personal ambition himself than to play the part of doctor in the role of life, to dress the wounds of the unfortunate, to treat diseases of the body and minister to the low-spirited and downhearted.
The strong masculine independence of his character is noted in the manner in which he has attacked all oppressions, be they from science or the Princes of the Church. He refused to blindly submit to the authority of the so-called masters in physics, and reserved the right to freely discuss their doctrines. “Hippocrates, Galen and Aristotle,” he remarks, “great as they are, never knew all. Science is the work of many successions of generations, and that which makes its grandeur so mysterious is that the more we know the more new problems are presented us for solution. Science, like, Nature, is infinite.” This lofty language deeply astounded thinkers, and roused against its author that same servile Pontifical party that prowled and plotted in the gilded antechamber of the aristocratic chateaux-owners of the day; the same variety of creatures we see to-day circulating, Indian file, through the corridors of our academies, faculties and courts. For the new as for the ancient, it is always the same word of the past, Magister dixit. That never changes.
While acting as professor at Lyons, Rabelais gave “a course of anatomical lectures, given with so much eloquence,” writes Eugene Noel, “as to astonish all listeners; and he showed his audience how man was constructed, like a magnificent and precious piece of architecture, a thing of grace and beauty, so that the people crowded to the lecture-room to hear him. Dolet followed these lectures. One day Rabelais lectured on the cadaver of a man who had been hanged, and he discoursed on his subject with so much grace and warmth, showing so clearly the miracle of our nature, that Dolet, leaving the hall, exclaimed: “Would I were hanged and I should be so could I be the occasion of so divine a discourse!” Some passages of this celebrated lecture may be found embodied in “Pantagruel;” for we see that he taught, outside the grandeur of creation, respect for life and what a sacred thing blood is.
Says Rabelais: “A single labor pain of this world is to manufacture blood continually. In this work each member has its proper office. Nutrition is furnished by the whole of nature; it is the bread, it is wine—these are the aliments of all species. In order to find and prepare this material, the hands of mankind work, the feet climb and bear the machinery, the eyes lead us, the tongue tastes for us, the teeth masticate our food, while the stomach receives and digests.” Here our anatomist dwells somewhat at length on the formation of the blood and the part played in digestion by our organs, adding:
“What joy among these dispensing officers of the body when, after their complex work and hard labor, they see this stream of red gold. Each limb separates and opens to assimilate or purify anew this treasure, the blood. The heart, with its musical diastole and systole, subtilizes it so that, met at the ventricle, it is perfection; then, by the veins, it returns from all the limbs. The harmony of Heaven is no greater than that of the body of man. One is overwhelmed and lost when endeavoring to penetrate the depths of this wonderful microcosm. Believe me, there is therein something divine; ah! this little world is so good that, this alimentation achieved, it thinks already for those who are not yet born.”
This extract from Rabelais serves to repel the accusation of scepticism so often made against him, and we see two men in the personality of the celebrated writer of the sixteenth century: the savant who enriched belle lettres, and the popular philosopher who addressed himself to the disinherited of fortune and science. It was for the latter that he claimed from secular power the right to the material satisfactions of life, aside from the opinion of Pope and Church. Rabelais was the very incarnation of philanthrophy and in this above all other things he has honored the medical profession, of which he is an immortal member.
Rabelais it was who wished to be Architriclinus for the poor, for the indigent, the joyous heart of the Pantagruelist. It was to the latter that he remarked: “Drink merry friends, eternally, drink like hungry fishes. I shall, be your cup-bearer and host; I shall attend to your thirst, and never fear that the wine will fall short as at the wedding in Cana. As much as you draw from the tap, as much more will I astonish you at the bung; so that the wine cask shall never be empty; source of all life’s enjoyment, perpetual spring of happiness.”
The recollection of his youth, so calm and joyous in his father’s saloon, “the Lamprey Tavern,” amid the brave drinkers and gay wits, with full goblets of the rich Septembral vintage, pure, sparkling, rosy, grape juice, the glorious wine of his native Province, had much influence on the ideas and opinions of the philosopher. He heard again, as in the echos of memory, the merry songs of the grape gatherers, and the Bacchic chants died away in musical notes adown the aisles of the Temple of Time. He was happy in knowing himself to be Francois Rabelais, doctor in medicine, but looking backwards, he felt the vague and indefinable sentiment of poetry, that is ever associated with great genius. It was then he cried:
“O bouteille!
Pleine tout
Des mysteres,
D’un oreille
Je t’ecoute.”
Yet his heart was never sad, nor even tinged with melancholy. He dreamed of the golden age of a universal fraternity among mankind and eternal joy, the duration of the soul’s exile on earth.
To the Burgundy wine of France we owe this moral analgesia, which chases away passions and all cares engendered by stupid worldly ambition. He preferred the face of a jolly drunkard to the head of a tyrannical Cæsar. He loved the wine bibber’s nose, as he says “that musical bugle richly inlaid with colors of gorgeous design, purple, with crimson bands, enameled with jewel-like pimples, embroidered with veins of heavenly blue. Such a nose has the good priest Panzoult, and Piedbois, physician at Angers.”
Rabelais did not ignore the fact that these “good drinkers” once had the gout, for he did not forget to give a medical prognosis in the case of the voracious Gargantura. “All his life he will be subject to gravel.” But what difference is it though he had gravel, and the red nose, that glorious work of Bacchus? He derived his warmest consolation from the thought that a little good wine heated his blood and soothed the bitterness of life, making him forget the injustice of some, and the ingratitude of others; a veritable nepenthe for his miseries, cares and apprehensions. Every good drinker is a sage. Horace had said so, and Rabelais who had read this master of Latin poetry, inscribed on the front of his dwelling place
“HIC BIBITUR.”
“Within this place they drink wine, that delicious, precious, celestial, joyous, God-given, nectar and liquor.”
But, at the bottom of Master Francois Rabelais’ cask was a flavor not fancied by all the world, the taste of free thought, opposition to all tyranny, a Homeric spirit with a sonorous voice whose echo will resound into future ages. Our authors, including historians, philosophers and poets, revere his memory; and one of their greatest minds has said: “Rabelais was a Gaul, and what is Gallic is Grecian, for Rabelais is the formidable masque of antique comedy detached from the Greek proscenium, bronze turned into living flesh, a human face full of laughter, making us merry and laughing with us.” A similar judgment is pronounced by the author of Burgraves, and Notre Dame de Paris. Rabelais is immortal in spite of the ecclesiastical detractors who have covertly assailed his memory for several centuries.
A doctor, philosopher, writer, he was the first exception in the positive world, of that profound faith identical with science. It was for that reason that the physicians of the Middle Ages looked up to him as one of their glories; it is for this reason that his works should hereafter be placed among the medical classics and no longer remain neglected by the masses of that profession he honored. In the epitaph he left, he did not forget the doctoral title he always so honorably bore:
“Cordiger et medicus, dein pastor et intus obivi,
Si nomen quæris, te mea Scripta docent.”107
He did not think in making this verse, that the Parisians would one day engrave his name with his last words on the marble of his statue as witness for future generations that the memory of Rabelais must never be effaced.
[THE END.]
Reprint from
The Cincinnati Lancet-Clinic,
December 1, 1888 to
February 16, 1889.
Footnotes
1 The Mahometans considered dissection of the human cadaver not only as an impious act, but also forbid its practice by their religious dogmas. They believed that the soul, after death, did not suddenly abandon the body, but withdrew itself gradually, until it left the limbs and finally entered the thoracic cavity. Thus the body could not be dissected without suffering. However, osteology was not neglected, and studies were made on the bones gathered in cemeteries.
2 The romance of Dolopatos or the Seven Sages is the work of a Troubadour of the twelfth century, named Herbers. The origin of this poem seems to date back to Indian literature.
3 The words are in old French and therefore not easily translated:
“Vous avez oi la novelle
Tandis com li plaie est novelle
Lors pust estre mieux garie
Que lors quant elc est envieillie.” etc., etc.
4 This famous poem, by Perrot de St. Cloof, as a work of imagination, is considered the most remarkable literary monument of the Middle Ages.
5 The reader of old French can translate the following lines at his leisure:
La pie avoit tel meschief,
Et la Jambe si boursoufflee,
Si vessiee et si enflee
Si pleine de treus et de plaies;
In’il i avoit, ce croi, de naies
Et d’estoupes demi giron,
Boue et venin tout environ,
De toutes parts en saillait fors.
—Gautier de Conisi.
6 In the Miracles de Saint Louis we find the history of a cure effected through the royal touch. This cure affords an illustration of how the monks wrote medicine in the thirteenth century. The disease resulted in this patient from white swelling of the left knee. The following is the veracious chronicle:
“About the year of Our Savior 1174, before the Feast of St. Andre, one Jehan Dugue of the town of Combreus, in the Diocese of Orleans, was attacked by inflammation of the left leg near the knee. Several openings were observable in the flesh, which was soft and rotten above and below the joint.”
7 Bachelor was in other times a title of chivalry or a University degree. The word was derived from the Latin Bachalarius. The word was not introduced into France until the sixteenth century. Under the name bachelor or bachelard were afterwards known all young men in the army studying the profession of arms, or sciences or arts.
[8] See the oath taken by Christian apothecaries and those that fear God, prescribed by the Procureur General, Jean de Resson, Institutions Pharmaceutique, 1626.
9 Before modern times medicated baths were not held in favor; the sand and iron baths, so highly extolled by Scribonius and Herodotus, of Rome, were unknown in France. Sulphur baths were recommended in the eleventh century, by Gilbert, of England, in dropsy and other cachectic affections; and by Arnauld de Villeneuve, in cases of stone in the bladder. Mineral water baths did not come into use really until the sixteenth century. Hubert praised the waters of Bourboune in 1570, and Pidoux those of Pougnes in 1584. The waters of Auvergne and the Pyrennees were first described in the seventeenth century, as well as those of Aix and of De Begnols, in Genanden.
10 Procopius, the Greek historian, born at Cæsarea in the year 500, left behind him numerous works, among which may be enumerated L’Histoire de son temps, in eight volumes (Procopii Cæsariensis Historia sui temporibus). This history of the times by Procopius gives a full description of the Plague, and is one of the chef d’oeuvres of medical literature, one that will never be excelled. In this work nothing being omitted, not even the different clinical forms, it is truly classical.
11 Georgius Florentius Gregorius, Historia Francorum, de 417 591 A.D.
12 Anglada: Etude sur les Maladies eteintes et les Maladies Nouvelles.
13 Traduction de Laurent Joubert de Montpellier.
14 Black. “Histoire de la Medecine et de la Chirurgie.”
15 The “Chronique de Raoul Glaber,” Benedictine of Cluny, covers the period between the year 900 and 1046. It may be found translated in the collection of memoirs on the History of France by Guizot.
16 “Nouvelle Bibliotheque des Manuscripts.”
17 Satirical writers would not have failed to have spoken of the marks left by small-pox. Such authors as Martial, who frequented the public baths in order to write up the physical infirmities of his fellow-townsmen, to the end of divulging their deformities in biting epigram, would only have been too happy to have mocked the faces of contemporaries marked by the cicatrices of small-pox.
18 In the year 570, a violent disease, with running of the belly and variola, cruelly afflicted Italy and France.
19 Gregorii Turonensis, Opera Omnia, Liber V.
20 Latin corallum, which signifies heart, lung, intestines, and by extension of meaning, the interior of the body.
“C’est la douleur, c’est la bataille
Qui li detrenche la coraille.”
—Roman de la Rose.
21 Sauvel, “Histoire et recherches des antiquites de la Ville de Paris.”
22 In the year 622, Aaron pointed out small-pox for the first time, but it was only in the year 900 that the two Arabian physicians, Rhazes and Avicenna, wrote their works on this malady and determined the clinical forms, giving the prognosis and diagnostic signs and the methods of treatment. Rhazes, physician to the hospital at Bagdad, recommended, on account of the warm climate of his country, cool and refreshing drinks. In the period of lever, he advised copious bleedings, and for children wet cupping. He covered up his patients in warm clothing, had their bodies well rubbed, and gave them a plentiful supply of ice-water to drink. In certain cases, he placed large vessels of hot water, one in front and one behind the patient, in order to facilitate the eruptive process; then the body was anointed before the sweat cooled off. He prescribed lotions for the eyes when the eruption was heavy in the ocular regions. He advised the use of gargles. He opened the pustules, when they maturated, with a golden needle, and absorbed the pus with pledgets of cotton. He gave opium for the diarrhœa and insomnia, and, when the disease declined, used mild purgatives, etc., etc.
23 Aaron, a contemporary of Paulus d’Aegineta, speaks only briefly of the malady in his works. Rhazes mentions measles in his works, giving a clear account of its diagnosis and treatment. He says that when the patient experiences great anxiety and falls into a syncope, he should be plunged into a cold bath and then be vigorously rubbed over the skin to the end of provoking the eruption. Avicenna did not recognize measles, considering it only a billious fever or small pox. Constantine, the African, follows the example of Avicenna and reproduces the opinion of the Arabian School without comments.
24 Johannis Philipi Ingrassiae. “De tumoribus praeter naturam.” Cap. I.
25 Fernelli. “Universa Medico.”
26 “Brief recit et succinte narration de la navigation faicte en ysles de Canada.” Paris, 1545.
27 Gregory of Tours says that in Paris they had a place of refuge, where they cleaned their bodies and dressed their sores.
28 They designated by the name of borde, bordeau, bordell, bordette, bourde, or bourdeau, a small house or cabin built on the edge of town; a cabin intended to contain lepers. The word bordell, a house of ill-fame, as used even in modern days, takes its origin from borde, an asylum for lepers.
29 Etienne Barbazin, erudite and historian, born in 1696, author of a number of works on the History of France: “Recueil alphabetique de pieces historiques”; “Tableaux et Contes Francais, des XII., XIII., XIV., et XV. centuries”; “The Orders of Chivalry, etc.” He also left numerous manuscripts on the origin of the French language. See “Bibliotheque de l’Arsenal.”
30 Pierre Andre Mathiole, “De Morbo Gallico.”
31 Note sur la syphilis au XIII. siecle, “Gazette Medicale de Paris.”
32 “Cyrurgia,” Magistri Guilielmi de Saliceti, 1476.
33 Michel Scott: “De procreatione hominis physionomia.” Work published in 1477, but written in 1250, for the author was born in 1210.
34 It was Fracastor who gave venereal diseases the name of syphilis in his poem “Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus,” published at Verona in 1530. According to Ricord, syphilis is derived from the Greek words sus, pork, and philia, love (love for pork). Gorre in the Romanesque language long before had the same signification.
35 The Provencal text in the original reads as follows: “La reino vol que toudes lous samdes la Baylouno et un barbier deputat des consouls visitoun todos las filios debauchados, que seran au Bourdeou; et si sen trobo qualcuno qu’abia mal vengut de paillardiso, que talos filios sion separados et lougeados a part afin que non las counougoun, por evita lou mal que la jouinesso pourrie prendre.”
36 Astruc: “De Morbis Venereis,” chap. viii.
37 Jean de Gaddesen: “De concubitu cum muliera leprosa, in Rosa Anglica.”
38 “Cyrurgia Guidonis de Cauliaco.”
39 Torella: “De Pudendagra Tractatus.”
40 “The reign of astrology,” remarks Sprengle, “led physicians to attribute the affection to the influence of the stars. Saturn who devoured his children, had, following the common expression, produced the pox. It was his conjunction with Mars, in the sign of the Virgin, that gave rise to the epidemic. Or it was the conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn in Scorpio, as in 1484. At other times it was the opposition of these two planets, as was noticed in 1494. Finally, it was the conjunction of Saturn and Mars, as in 1496. (“If it was the combined action of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the sign of the Virgin that produced the syphilis, the astrologers might well think that Mercury could destroy the effects of the disease, which would be better than bleeding or purging.”) Leonicus attributed the cause of the venereal plague to the general inundations that occurred about that period, i.e., 1493, and afterwards in 1528. Besides, they recognized as a cause of these venereal symptoms a general acridity of the humors and the pre eminence of the four cardinal humors, but more especially of a metastasis of bilious matter from the liver towards the genital organs.”
41 “De Morbo Gallico.”
42 “Antiquites de Paris,” Tome III., by Sauval.
43 “Observations et histoires chirurgiques,” 1670, Geneve.
44 Antoine Lecocq, “De ligno sancto.”
45 The use of mercury, larga manu, in frictions was commenced in 1497.
46 Rabelais himself had attended syphilitic patients at Lyons, and perhaps elsewhere, with more or less success. He says, in fact, in the fifth book of Pantagruel, that among impossible things it is necessary to class a quintessence “warranted to cure the pox, as they say at Rouen.” Now, be it known that syphilis of Rouen was of such a bad type that it passed for an incurable malady. From whence the proverb, “For Rouen pox and Paris itch there’s no remedy.”
47 “De Rebus Oceanis et de Orbe novo decades.”
48 “Histoire Philosophique et Politique de l’Occulte.”
49 Cœlius Aurelianus: “De Acutis Morbis.” Edition Dalechamp, p. 90.
50 Magic had rank among the sciences of the school of Alexandria 150 years before our era, in a medico-theosophical sect, whose members applied to cosmogony the doctrine of emanation. These admitted that demons come from the source of eternal light, and that man might become their equal by leading a contemplative life. There were a number of such demons, all phenomena of nature, and particularly all diseases were attributed to demonic power. These demons were incorporeal, and their light surrounded certain bodies in the same manner that the sun gleams in water without being contained therein. (See Sprengel). Let it not be forgotten that the Alexandrian Library, the richest institution of the kind in ancient times, and the Temple of Serapis, in which it was installed, were committed to the flames at the instigation of the monks, by order of their creature, the apathetic Emperor Theodosius.
51 “De doct. Christ.” liber II.
52 Baluze, “Capitularia regum,” capitola 13.
53 Fleury, “Histoire Ecclesiastique,” Tome XVII.
54 Leloyer, “Des Spectres,” Angers, 1588.
55 See “Psychologie Experimentale,” by Dr. Puel; “L’Histoire de l’Occulte,” by Felix Fabart; the “Livre des Esprits,” by Allan Kardec, and “Fakirisme Moderne,” by Dr. Gibier,—many extracts from the latter having been translated and published in the Cincinnati Lancet-Clinic in 1887.
56 Sprengel, work cited, tome iii.
57 Tetrabiblon, ii. et iv.
58 Sprengel, tome ii., et Alexander Trallian. Liber ix. et xii.
59 Arnauld de Villeneuve: “De Phlebotomia.”
60 Bernard Gordon: “Lillium Medicinæ.”
61 J. Fernelli, “Opera Universa Medicina,” liber II, chapter 16.
62 Ambroise Pare, “Oeuvres,” ninth edition, Lyons, 1633, p. 780.
63 Read the works of Jean Wier in the Bibliotheque Diabolique, with the commentaries of Bourneville thereon. These books have for a title “Histoires disputes et discours des illusions et impostures des diables, des magiciens infames, sorcieres et empoisonneurs, des ensorcelez et demoniaques et de la guerizon d’iceux.” Two splendidly edited volumes. Delahaye & Co., publishers.
64 J. Weir: “De præstigiis dæmonum et incantationibus.”
65 Capeifuge.
66 Monstrellet, Chroniques, liber, III.
67 Jacques Duclerc, Memoires, liber IV., cap. IV.
68 We find proof of this fact in the works of Gautier Coinsi, who wrote on “magicians” as early as 1219, He gave such sorcerers the name tresgetteres.
“En la ville une gieve avoit
Qui tant d’engien et d’art savoit
De tresgiet d’informanterie,
De barat et d’enchanterie
Que devant li apartement
Faisoit venir a parlement
Les ennemis et les deables.”
69 Calmeil’s work, before cited, p. 103.
70 “Ecole du pur Amour de Dieu ouverte aux Scavants.” Work cited by P. Dufour.
71 “Lettres au sujet de la magie, des malefices et des Sorciers,” Paris, 1725.
72 Remigius, “Demonolatriæ libritres,” Lugd, 1595, p. 55.
73 Thomas Erastus, “De Lamiis.”
74 Nider: “In malleo maleficorum.”
75 The ecstasy takes a sublime and contemplative character if, during watchfulness, the soul looks upwards to the Divinity; the hallucinations are erotic, on the other hand, if the mind and heart dwell on dreams of love; when the thoughts are obscene during the wakeful period, lascivious sensations are apt to follow. With irritation of the sexual organs, male or female, come illusions, which are mistaken for diabolical practices on the part of demons. (See Esquirol.)
There is considerable of a correlation between chronic metritis and obscene dreams.
76 Mental suggestions.
77 F. Willis observed a similar outbreak in 1700 in a convent at Oxford, England, where the barking fit was followed by convulsions and finally pronounced mania.
Reulin and Hecquet described a similar epidemic in 1701, characterized by meowing like cats, which were heard every day at the same hour among a crowd of nuns in a convent of Paris. These nuns all suddenly ceased meowing when they were accused and told if the thing re-occurred they should all be taken out and horse-whipped by a company of soldiers, who were stationed at the convent door to carry out the order. See “Traite des affections vaporeuses.”
78 Mind reading?
79 “Histoire des Diables,” p. 57 et 58.
80 That is to say, particular states of sensation among certain beings, conditions which may be produced artificially, with the development of lucidity, in proportion to the power of the hypnotizer.
81 Manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Published for the first time by M. A. Benet, Paris, 1883.
82 For full report the reader is referred to the original French.—Translator.
83 Zoellner, “Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen,” 1877 and 1881.
84 When we question the Fakirs of India as to the phenomena of Spiritualism, they answer that they are produced by spirits. “The Spirits” they say are the Souls of our ancestors, serving us now as mediums; we loan them our natural fluid to combine with theirs, and by this mixture they establish a fluid body, by the aid of which they act on matter, as you have seen.” (Paul Gibier, “Le Spiritisme.”)
85 To give an idea of the ignorance of the materialistic school of so-called scientists, it is only necessary to read the word “Somnambulism” as defined in “Littres Dictionary of Medicine,” where we find the following lines on rappings: “These sounds are due to a slight previous displacement of the patella, of the tibia on the femur, when the tendon of the long lateral peroneal suddenly brings the parts back to their first position. This displacement is induced by muscular contraction and can be easily cultivated by habit.” The author of this definition supports his statement by the pretended experiments of Flint and Schiff; he might have said more justly on the mere assertion of Jobert de Lamballe and Velpeau, who have all committed, as is well known, in this connection a grave and stupid error in physiology.”
86 Mr. and Mrs. L. B. are intimate friends of Dr. Puel, but the the lady, who is a medium, gives us her mediumistic services in a most disinterested manner; besides, she and her husband occupy a social position which places them far beyond the need or desire for pecuniary compensation.
87 One of my friends, L. B., always has a wax taper in his hand, which he lights from time to time, in order to find whether any fraud is manifest.
88 Recital of M. Jacolliot, Judge of the Tribunal at Pondichery, India. Cited by Dr. Gibier.
89 Dr. Gibier, “Le Spiritisme,” 1887. In the experiments made by Mr. Oxon, of the University of Oxford, with the mediums Slade and Monck, spontaneous writing was obtained, under the following conditions: The slates were new, marked with a sign, and closely bound together. Oxon never lost sight of these slates and held down his hand on them for the time being. They were never out of his possession after he had washed and marked them. These experiments were made under a full glare of light.
90 Pierre Le Loyer: Discussions and histories of spectres, visions, apparitions of men, angels, demons, and spirits making themselves visible to men. 1605. Paris, Bibliotheque de l’Arsenal. 1225. S. A., in 4°.
91 There was at Athens a house which passed as being haunted by a phantom. The philosopher, Athenodorus, rented this mansion. The first night he occupied the same, while engaged in his studies, he heard and saw a spirit, that made repeated signs to him to follow; he accordingly followed this shade of the departed into the courtyard, where the ghost disappeared. Athenodorus marked the spot of ground on which the spirit had last stood, and next day asked the town magistrate to dig up the earth at the place named; there they found bones loaded with chains, which were released and given decent sepulture, with all due funeral honors. The phantom returned no more (Pliny the Younger, Letters VII et XXVII).
This is almost the history of the experience of Kate Fax at Hydesville.
92 As examples of responses obtained by psychography, we may cite the following definitions given by Eugene Nus and his collaborateurs, artists, philosophers, and men of letters:
Physics.—Knowledge of material forces that produce life and the organism of worlds.
Chemistry.—Study of different properties of materials, either simple or composite.
Mathematics.—Properties of forces and numbers flowing from the universal laws of order.
Electricity.—Direct force from the earth, emanating from particular life to worlds.
Magnetism.—Animal force, holding persons together; bond of universal life.
Galvanism and Electro-Magnetism.—Combined forces of earthly and animal life.
93 “I am attacked by two classes of different persons,” says Galvani, “the savants and the ignorant; all torment and ridicule me, calling me the dancing master of frog legs. Meantime, I believe I have discovered one of the great forces of Nature.”
94 Laplace; “Traite du calcul des probabilities.”
95 Olivier Basselin was the proprietor of a mill in the valley of Vire, where he composed his little poems; hence, he named his rhymes “Vaux de Vire.”
96 This is, to a certain extent, a dialect poem, and bears a close resemblance in more than one respect to Tennyson’s “Northern Farmers”.
97 “Et mon orine
Vous dit elle que je meure?”
98 “On pense estre guari par l’obscure parole
De quelque charlatan qui le pipe et le vole;
Un autre plus niais me fait exorciser,
Ou par un circoncis se fait cabaliser.”
99 In the old French text, “Condampnacion des bancquetz a la louenge de diepte et sobriete pour le prouffit du corps humain.”
100 Poetic license in such rhymes unlimited.
101 The group of poets of the same period was composed of Ronsard, Du Bellay, Jodelle, Dorat, Belleau, Bail, and last, but not least, Pontus de Thiard.
102 Eugene Noel, “Rabelais medecin, ecrivain et philosophe.”
103 In the happy Abbey of Theleme, that Gargantua builds, we see the inscription of Fourier’s phalanctory destined for the elect, with the inscription over the great door:
“Ci n’ entrez pas hypocrites, bigots,
Vieulx matagots, mariteux, boursofles.
“Haires, cagots, caphards, empantouples,
Gueux mitoufles, frapparts escarnifles.
“Ci n’ entrez pas, masche faim practiciens,
Clercs, basochiens, mangeurs de populaire,
Officiaulx, scribes et pharisiens,
Juges anciens,” etc., etc.
104 The first edition of “Pantagruel” dates back to 1553, and the year following he was physician at the Lyons Hospital, where he made first, before Vesalius, anatomical lectures on the human cadaver.
105 This origin of the French thermal sources is very curious, and certainly ignored by ordinary patients.
106 Agrippa has defined the role of those who deal in magic in his work, “De Vanitate Scientiarum, cap de Magia Naturali.” He says: “Magicians are diligent students of nature, and by means of previous preparation often produce marvelous effects, which the vulgar mostly deem miracles, whereas they may only be natural work.” Traduction de Louis de Mayerne, Turquet, medecin du roi Henry IV. 1603.
107 “Monk, Physician, afterwards Clergyman, I descend into the tomb. If thou desire to know mine name, mine works will inform thee.”