MEDICINE IN THE LITERATURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

All savants who have studied the literary and historical part of medicine fully recognize the powerful interest it offers, especially that medicine portrayed in the works of poets and dramatic authors of the Middle Ages. It is in the works of these writers, in fact, that we find the most exact appreciation of medical ideas of the epoch, because we can judge their morals, criticise their faults, account for their tendencies—all without bringing in medical science at any given moment, with its teachings, errors, and prejudices.

In all that concerns the Middle Ages, we shall find this first in the writings of philosophers, in certain dramatic works, known under the name of Moralities, because their purport was to demonstrate, under the form of an allegory, a precept of morality. The personages of such dramatic scenes always represent ideas, often abstract and usually fantastic,—The World, Justice, Good Company, Gourmands, Dinner, Banquet, Experience, Gout, Jaundice, Dropsy, and Apoplexy. A second class, errors and prejudices, are seldom wanting in some poetical works, in comedies and farces, satirical and indecent poems, that recall some of the early productions of the Latin Theatre. Eventually impressed with the Gallic spirit of levity, these short pieces, enjoyed by clerks and small tradesmen, contain cutting criticisms on the weaknesses of mankind, doctors in particular. These plays are considered the embryo of the French stage, which, later, has been immortalized by the most illustrious of our writers of comedy.

An unaffected gayety often breaks out in brilliant, sparkling dialogues in these frivolous farces, and assures the instant success of the play. The public laughed in high glee, without prudery, at the broad I insinuations and comical acts in such representations. So the writers of that period went into raptures when they chanced to make a hit with their satirical tirades, that amused the passing age. Sometimes the clergy were satirized as well as the doctor; even the Pope himself received the attention of the comedians, as witness the carnival of 1511. Even the avarice of Louis XII. was ridiculed. Comedy’s procession represented Justice by its attorneys, shysters and police; but, above all, comedy delighted to burlesque the doctor, Facultas saluberrema medicinæ parisiensis, ridiculing them like the rest of the world, without the least respect for their robe or bonnet.

Pray, what do these jolly, railing spirits of the Middle Ages say of our medical ancestors of the good old times? Master Jehan Bouchet, for example, with his piece, Traverseur des voyes perilleuses, and Pierre Gringore under the pseudonym of Mere Sotte, and Nicholas Rousset and Coustellier, and Jacques Grevin and Pierre Blanchet, and all other members of that joyous group without care, without pretension, but not without talent. If professional honor was never really put on trial by these wits, the pedantic gravity of our medical forefathers, their formidable doctoral accoutrement, their consultations, sentences formulated in horrible and barbarous Latin, were all the objects of raillery and piquant epigrams. We shall find also, in other works we propose to analyze, the same false ideas of the public regarding the healing art as exists to-day; the same tendency to always lead one into error, and unjustly accuse the medical profession of all the accidents that happen to a patient—this, too, notwithstanding all ancient codes of hygiene and all the ages of experience.

When a physician prescribed, for example, in the case of one attacked by fever, the daily libations were stopped, and we always find the neighbors and boon companions of the sufferer enter the sick room for the purpose of criticizing the doctor’s prescriptions and orders, and such persons excited the patient by their remarks on medical despotism. This has always been the case since doctors and patients were created, not only in the Middle Ages, but at all epochs. Olivier Basselin bears testimony to this fact in one of his charming Vaux de Vire[95] poetical compositions, roundelays and Bacchic songs, dating back to the sixteenth century; this sonnet is not long;[96] it relates to a drunkard to whom only barley water is given, and who recovers his health, according to the veracious poet, through a charitable friend, who breaks the doctor’s orders and fills the patient up with wine. We have often read this poem with pleasure, and give a condensed extract:

The Bibliotheque of the French Theatre contains a great number of other dramatic compositions, as well as comedies and farces, in which doctors carry principal roles, it is true, but more often are introduced for the mere purpose of giving the author a chance for pleasantry at the expense of medicine; and these characters sometimes exceed the limit of license. Some of these works are gems of literary art. We may cite, for instance, the “Farce of the Doctor who Cures all Diseases,” by Nicholas Rousset; the “Discours Facetieux” of Coustellier; “The true Physician, who Cures all Known Diseases;” and several besides, “La Medecine de Maistre Grimache,” “Le Triomphe de treshaulte et tres puissante Dame Verolle,” of Francois Juste; “Mary and the Doctor,” “The Sweetheart of the Family Physician,” as well as some farces by Tabarin—works dating back to the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

But we shall only take up the study of a few works that have a veritable literary medical interest, and shall confine ourselves to the study of the “Farces de Maitre Pathelin, du Munyer et de la Folie du Monde;” to the moralities of “A’aveugle et du Boiteux, de Folie et d’Amour;” to the comedies of “La Tresoriere et de Lucelle;” to the tragedy “De la Goutte,” and to the book of “Gargantua et de Pantagruel.” This will suffice to give an idea of medicine as portrayed in the literature of the Middle Ages.

THE FARCE OF MASTER PATHELIN.

The farce of Master Pathelin, whose author was Pierre Blanchet, is certainly the richest jewel in the crown of the old French Theatre; it was what inspired Moliere in several of his works. Represented for the first time in 1480, this celebrated farce is one of the most precious literary monuments for the study of Middle Age morality. It is a chef d’œuvre of spirit, malice, comedy, and naivete, in which medicine is found in every scene, either in the simulation of disease, with consultations, with drugs, and, most amusing of all, the eternal ingratitude of the sick.

All the educated world knows the subject of Master Pathelin: A lawyer without a case or client; a man living on his wits and expedients, making dupes and yet retaining a certain degree of professional correctness in his language and his artifices. Guillemette, his wife, is his worthy accomplice. It is she who reproaches him with not having more clients and his reputation of earlier days; of starving her to death by famine. It is she who excites him by ironically saying:

And Pathelin responds that he cannot get their clothing out of pawn without redeeming or stealing it—both things out of the question, as he has no money and will not commit a crime. It is then that the worthy couple hit on the credit system to renew their wardrobe. It is for this purpose he goes to a draper’s to purchase cloth to make new clothes. On entering the shop he uses the salutation of the period, “God be with you,” and politely inquires after the shopkeeper’s health, which to him is very dear. Then he asks after his father’s health, telling him he resembles his sire like an old picture. Finally, he takes sixteen yards of fine cloth, and, telling the draper to call at his house in the evening for his money and to eat, as Master Pathelin expresses it, “a Rouen goose roasted,” having invited the astonished tradesman to dine with him, the lawyer walks out with the cloth without paying. Arriving home he relates his adventure to the delighted Guillemette, who is overpowered with bewilderment, however, when she learns that the draper is invited to a roast goose supper. At first it is suggested that they borrow a tailor’s goose, but fear that the draper will not appreciate the joke and demand his money legally induces the worthy couple to adopt a strategem. It is very simple: Master Pathelin is to feign insanity, or rather that maniacal form of excitation so frequently employed even at the present day by those who seek to avoid the consequences of crimes—an excitation principally characterized by uncontrollable loquacity, mobility of ideas, incoherence, and pretended illusions.

These scenes of simulation are extremely curious and interesting. As soon as the draper enters the wife warns him not to make a noise in the house:

But the draper refuses to accept the explanation. It cannot be a week, he says, for

Then the voice of the attorney is heard in the next room shouting to his wife:

Rose water in that century was employed to reanimate the strength of sick people. Among apothecaries it was called aqua cordialis temperata. Rose water was prescribed in the following cases: “In mortis subitis et malignis, ubicunque magnus est virium lapsus præscribitur; quemadmodum etiam prodest a morbo convalescentibus, ad vires instaurandas.”

Pathelin simulates hallucinations of sight, and uses all manner of words employed by magicians in their conjurations; he asks the draper and Guillemette to put a charm around his neck such as are used to frighten away demons. He then, in his ravings, abuses the doctors for their malpractice and not understanding the quality of his urine.([97]) Notwithstanding all this the draper is not convinced and demands his money. We all know what importance was attributed to the examination of the urine in olden times, long before any search was made for albumen, sugar, or other morbid principles that it might contain. Charlatans especially exploited in this field of medicine, practicing it illegally in the country under the name of water jugglers or water judges. Such men still practice in Normandy and certain northern provinces of France.

The intestinal functions had also more or less importance in the eyes of the public, and the physician was not always consulted as when to give physic. People sent to an apothecary and ordered a clyster with cassia and other ingredients, according to the following formula of the pharmacopœia: “Cassia Pro Clysteribus. Est eadem pulpa cassiæ cum decocto herbarum aperitirarum extracta et saccharo Thomæo condita. Oportet autem illas herbas adhibere recentes, parumque decoquere, alias viribus aperitivis omnio privantur; siccæ autem per se carent virtute illa aperitiva.”

In the “Revue Historique” of Angers we find a document bearing on the private life of Cardinal Richelieu; it has for its title: “Things furnished for the person of His Most Eminent Highness, the Cardinal Duke Richelieu during the year 1635, by Perdreau, apothecary to his Excellency.” During the one year the Cardinal had used seventy-five clysters and twenty-seven cassia boluses, without counting other laxative medicines and bottles of tisane, his purgative bill amounting to 1401 livres and 14 sous. It is evident that Richelieu was a badly constipated Cardinal.

It was a fine period for apothecaries, and we might add that Moliere did them considerable harm.

Let us return to Master Pathelin. He was allowed a short breathing spell for Guillemette, fought off the obdurate creditor by making him leave the room a few moments while her husband used the bedpan.

But this respite is of short duration; the draper soon returns to demand his cloth back or his money, although the wife declares her husband “is dying in frenzy.” Then commences another scene of maniacal simulation in this wonderful psychological play. In his pretended delirium, Pathelin indulges in Limousin patois, Flemish, Lower Breton; his words grow unintelligible and incoherent in order to convince the draper of his insanity.

Let us pass from a wild Flemish harangue, that possesses but little interest even to those understanding the dialects.

The psychic symptoms, which dominate in the simulated delirium of Master Pathelin, are especially incoherent in language with mobility of ideas. The author of this fine comedy had evidently observed the progressive instability of thought among certain maniacs, the impossibility of fixing their attention, the too rapid succession of ideas without order; in fact, that absolute incoördination, a kind of cerebral automatism, which is the announcement of the breaking-down of intellectual faculties and the prelude of absolute dementia. In his ravings, Pathelin descants on the Mal de Saint Garbot, or, more properly speaking, Garbold; this was dysentery, although such a scholar as Genin translates it as meaning hemorrhoids. Saint Garbold who was Bishop of Bayeux in the seventh century, was driven out from his episcopal chair by his diocesans, and, in order to be avenged, sent them dysentery.

We may remark, in this connection, that during the Middle Ages many maladies were called after the Saints, whose aid they invoked in given diseases; Saint Ladre or Lazare, for leprosy; Saint Roch, for the plague; Saint Quentin, for dropsy; Saint Leu, Saint Loupt, Saint Mathelin, Saint Jehan, Saint Nazaire, Saint Victor, for epilepsy, fever, deafness, madness, etc.

The mal Saint Andreux, mal Saint Antoine, mal Saint Firmin, mal Saint Genevieve, mal Saint Germain, mal Saint Messaut, mal Saint Verain, designated erysipelas, scurvy, etc. Drunkenness was called the mal Saint Martin.

Syphilis naturally had its patron Saint; in fact, it was known as mal Saint homme Job, Saint Merais, Saint Laurant, mal Saint Eupheme, etc. In fact, all diseases had as an attachment the name of one or more Saints, at whose shrine the afflicted might implore aid.

But to return to Master Pathelin: After numerous tirades he finishes by acknowledging his deceit to the draper. This is an epitome of the farce of Master Pierre Pathelin, a medical study that had an immense run in the fifteenth century and remains a valuable document regarding French morality in the Middle Ages, as interesting to the student of psychology as to the Theatre. Some years after this (1490) the sequel to Master Pathelin appeared, called the “Last Will of Pathelin,” which is also full of strange medical conceits appertaining to the age in which it was written. In this piece, Pathelin, after years of fraud and deceit, really becomes ill and sends for the lawyer and priest, abandoning the doctor to a certain extent. In his will he leaves all his ailments to different religious orders and charitable institutions, as, for instance, one item of his will reads as follows:

But enough of Master Pathelin. Let us now turn to the consideration of another curious farce.

LA FARCE DE MUNYER.

This farce, whose author was Andre de la Vigne, dates back, like preceding one, to the fourteenth century. The miller of the Middle Ages, the ancestor of our present Jack-pudding (French slang for miller), was in antique times the most rascally and cheating type of trader, from whence the old Gascon proverb, “One always finds a thief in a miller’s skin.”

In this farce we see the miller “lying in bed as though sick,” uttering long groans and sighing over the pains he professes to endure—groans, however, to which his wife appears insensible. He commences thus:

To this his wife responds indifferently, although the miller persists in asking for a bottle of good wine, saying that his “reins and belly need the supreme consolation of the bottle.” The wife obstinately refuses her husband the wine, remarking that he cannot “repair his stomach by filling the belly;” but, instead, she sends for the priest, who is, moreover, her lover, and carries on a flirtation with the holy man in the presence of her husband, for the purpose of making the invalid rise from his sick-bed; but, thinking his end near, the miller demands that he shall be permitted to die in the faith, or “mourir catholiquement.” He confesses to the priest, avowing all his thefts, his frauds, his falsification and amours, and is prepared to render his soul.

But the miller has absorbed some of the popular ideas of his day, professed by certain philosophers of the time; he believes that, at the moment of death, the soul of man escapes by his anus, and warns the priest to absolve him from his sins, saying:

The priest answers:

Then the miller remarks:

The wife and the priest pull the sick man to the edge of the bed and place him in such a position that, if the doctrine of soul departure by the anus be true, they may witness the miller’s final performance. The phenomenon of rectal flatulence is now observed, when suddenly to the consternation of the wife and priest, a demon appears, and placing a sack over the dying miller’s anus catches the rectal gas and flies off in sulphurous vapor. In the next act we see the Devil appear before his patron Lucifer bearing the sack supposed to contain the damned soul of the miller received in the aforesaid sack at the moment it escaped from the anus. The devil is commanded by Lucifer to empty the sack at the feet of Proserpine who is busily engaged in cooking in Hell’s kitchen, but in place of the miller’s soul they only find spoiled bran; the rascal has cheated even in death.

It seems strange that earlier comedy writers all showed a tendency to make their principle scenes pathological burlesques. Thus in many plays the heroes and heroines were attacked by colic in order to excite the laughter of the audience, when the buffoon would imitate by signs the act of defecation. This peculiar French gayety and lack of prudery is fully evidenced in the comic effects of Pourceaugnac with the detersive, insinuative and carminative clysters of Moliere.

This farce, had in former days, an immense success, and is still occasionally played, being considered a chef d’œuvre of malice and humor by our best critics and most distinguished authors. In France the audience always laugh when a thief while plundering is suddenly taken with pains in his bowels and diarrhœa, while a rectal syringe flourished aloft as a weapon of defense will bring down the gallery in a storm of applause.

L’AVEUGLE ET LE BOITEUX

Is another play in which medicine acts a part, by the same author of the preceding farce; the plot is as follows: A blind man and a lame man implore public charity on a deserted road; the blind man deplores his fate as never having seen the light, and the lame man bitterly bemoans not being able to walk but a few steps at one time, on account of the gout which has rendered him paraplegic. These two make a mutual avowal of their infirmities and agree to form a copartnership for mutual assistance; the lame man climbs on the blind man’s shoulders and they start out the road in search of charitable persons who may aid them with alms. On going some little distance the beggars hear a noise; this is made by a procession of monks going on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Martin. “What do they say?” asks the blind man; to which the lame man responds:

We all know the eternal popular faith and belief in the ability of the Saints to cure every malady that flesh is heir to. However, in the present instance, it seems that one of the requirements necessary to be healed was a perfect spirit of resignation to all ills on the part of the sufferer—now this is the case of our two mendicants, who now become alarmed at the idea that they may be cured and thus deprived of a method of earning their daily bread, i.e., by beggary, so they undertake a number of subterfuges to escape the pious pilgrimage, which gives rise to many amusing adventures and situations, which might be well utilized by some modern playwriter. In the end the two mendicants escape from going with the pilgrim monks to visit the Saint’s shrine, as the blind man detests the light and the lame man is too lazy to walk, in fact both are admirably suited with their afflictions. It is during one of these scenes that the lame man relates to the blind man the best methods for deceiving the public by simulating maladies, and making a regular profession of begging. He discloses all the secrets of those who in the Middle Ages sought public commiseration to earn alms; he remarks:

In this lengthy poem, too long to transcribe from the French, the lame mendicant gives a list of herbs, through means of which various diseases may be simulated, especially those maladies of the skin that are repulsive to the majority of mankind; thus he describes the itch produced by certain varieties of the clematis and the appearance of leprosy induced by the use of an ointment of which veronica formed the basis. He also describes how to produce the disease of Saint Fiacre, an affection characterized by warts and ulcers around the anus. It is useless to add there is nothing new under the sun. Let us now turn our attention to another play, i.e.;

LUNACY AND LOVE.

This is a play with six characters, written in 1556, by Louise Labe, sometimes called the Belle Cordiere.

Love, at all periods of time, has served as an inexhaustible subject of analysis and observation, not only to poets and novelists, but also to moralists, and especially physicians. Psychologists have always considered love, when excessive, as an evidence of insanity. Esquirol says that “love has lost its empire in France, indifference having captivated the hearts of our people, who, given over to amorous passions, having neither purity nor exhaltation, engender attacks of erotic lunacy.” This learned alienist has also discovered that out of 323 cases of insanity among the poor, love figured as a cause in forty-six cases; and out of 167 cases among the rich, twenty-five persons went insane on account of love. These close relations between “Lunacy and Love,” admitted since mankind entered into society, have served as a text for the Middle Ages, as is witnessed by the title of the play we have mentioned; a work the more curious, for reason of its finesse, notwithstanding the jests employed by its author as the following analysis will witness.

Love and Lunacy arrive at the same moment at a festival to which Jupiter has convened all the Gods. Lunacy, full of arrogance, wishes to enter the banquet-hall before Love, and in order to do so turns everything topsy-turvy to secure his end. The vindictive Love, in order to be avenged, discharges a flight of arrows from the historical quiver; but Lunacy avoids these by becoming invisible, and in his wrath pulls out Love’s eyes, but afterwards skilfully puts them back in place with a bandage.

Love, in despair at being blinded, goes to implore the help of his mother. The latter desires the boy to remove the bandages from his eyes, but his efforts are useless; they are full of knots. Venus calls on Jupiter for justice for the injury done her boy. The Father of Gods accepts the position of arbitrator and cites the offender to appear before his tribunal. Mercury acts as attorney for Lunacy and Apollo does the special pleading for Love. In the cross-examination, Love tries to inform Jupiter of the fashions of loving, and tells him if he desires true affection and happiness to descend to earth, drop all appearances of greatness, and, under the guise of a simple mortal, seek to captivate some earthly beauty. Apollo, speaking for his client, young Cupid, is so eloquent that all the assemblage of Gods is seduced by his oratory, and condemns Lunacy without even giving him a hearing. But Jupiter is impartial in his tribunal, and allows Mercury to argue for the defense. The latter pleads, in turn, with such eloquence that one-half the jury is ready to say that Lunacy is not guilty—at least among Olympian jurors. Jupiter is undecided; he is very wise, however, and makes the following decision. “Owing to the differences of witnesses and the importance of the case, we have set the case for a re-hearing in three times seven times nine centuries—18,900 years—until which time Folly, or Lunacy, shall lead the Blind (Cupid) anywhere she chooses to go; and, at the end of the time named, should Cupid’s eyes be restored, the Fates may decree otherwise.”

Lunacy and Love are thus rendered inseparable and eternal on earth; they are connected together for the happiness of humanity and the delight of psychologists, philosophers and moralists, who will always find in these subjects something new for meditation and study. Need we add, also, that the alienists will secure any number of clients owing to Jupiter’s decision?

Let us now turn to a brief mention of

THE TREASURER’S WIFE.

This comedy, by Jacques Grevin, a medical poet, born at Clermont, was written in the sixteenth century. This physician, from his earliest youth, was enamored with the daughter of one of his confreres, Charles Etienne; she was a noted beauty, but preferred another doctor, Jean Liebaut, the author of “La Maison Rustique,” to our poet. In order to console himself for the loss of his sweetheart, Grevin commenced to write rhymes, and even surpassed Jodelle, the author of “Cleopatra and Dido,” by his fecundity. He followed Marguerite de France, wife of the Duke of Savoy, to whom he was family physician, to Turin, and died there in 1570.

He left several plays in verse, the principal one of which was “La Tresoriere,” an adulterous comedy relating to the intrigue of a financier’s wife. It is only of medical interest inasmuch as it alludes to syphilis, which at the time this play was written prevailed in Europe almost as an epidemic, and as a study of the morals of the epoch is not without interest to the syphilographer. The author, probably owing to his early disappointment in love, had but a poor opinion of the virtue of the women in his century, and makes many odd comparisons, as, for instance:

He was no believer in the morality of the aristocratic classes, and alludes to the laxity of social rules and the spread of syphilis in the following lines:

The reference to the syphilis is here found in the two last lines; if she has a love affair, there is ordure in the result. The allusion in other passages is much more apparent, but too impolite for an English rendering.

Let us now turn to another curious old French play,

LUCILLE AND INNOCENCE UNCOVERED.

Pharmacists, even at the present day, notwithstanding the rigid laws to the contrary, often sell narcotics without a prescription. That the modern druggist only follows the custom of his ancestor is evidenced by this comedy of the sixteenth century, by Louis Le Jars, i.e., “Lucille.”

The plot is as follows: At the moment a rich banker gives the hand of his daughter Lucille to the Baron Saint Amour, he learns that the former has been already secretly married to one of his clerks, a young man named Ascagne. In his wrath the banker places a pistol at Ascagne’s head, offering him at the same moment a goblet of poison, giving him his choice as to the manner of death. Ascagne chooses poison, and bravely drinks half the goblet and falls down, apparently inanimate. The father then has the body of Ascagne carried into his daughter’s presence, and also the remaining half-goblet of poison; the young woman does not hesitate to drain the other half of the poison to the dregs, and drops to the floor, like Ascagne, without consciousness.

Almost immediately following this double poisoning, a courier arrives and demands Ascagne, who turns out to be the son of the King of Poland. The banker is in despair, and sends post-haste for the apothecary who furnished the poison, and the druggist forthwith declare that the mixture is only a narcotic, the effects of which he can soon neutralize. Scene of overpowering tenderness and joy, and marriage over again to a real Prince.

It sometimes happens that physicians themselves give away opiates without regard for the rights of the medicamentarius renenum coquens of the neighborhood. Jean Auvray, Member of the French Parliament and poet, evidences this fact in a tragio-comedy entitled “Innocence Uncovered.” This little play is only a rural version of Phedra and Hippolyte. Marsilie, in fact, is in love with Fabrice, the son of Phocus, her husband, by a former marriage. Her passion for the young man is so violent that she falls ill, and in a visit made her by Fabrice the latter learns of the love his step-mother bears him, but loyally repulses her advances. Marsilie, reflecting on the infamy of her conduct, wishes to kill herself in a fit of remorse; but to prevent this and calm her, Fabrice promises that if she will not suicide he will visit her when his father is absent from home. Phocus soon starts on a journey. Marsilie recalls to Fabrice the promise he made, but Fabrice answers her offers with contempt and quits her presence overcome with horror. Acting under the advice of her maid servant, through fear that the young man may tell his father of her perfidy, Marsilie consents to poison Fabrice, and sends her valet, Thomas, to see a doctor and thus secure poison. The unfortunate valet is very much embarrassed and cannot tell the physician exactly what he desires, and in order to obtain some deadly drug he details the symptoms of an imaginary malady, and descants in the following manner: “Sir, for several days past my master, who exceeds the Persians as a gourmand in the cooking of delicious meats, gave a grand dinner party, equal to that of the Gods at the wedding festival of Thetis. Now, know that I, his principal servant, sat behind him; there by his order I tasted every dish brought in by the butler, when such a terrible fury broke forth in my belly that I was overcome with fright and agony. The rumblings and grumblings in my interior were only comparable to the reverberation of thunder claps among the highest crags of Tartarus. Hell was astonished and our castle walls shook,” etc., etc.

This narration, which is made in French rhyme and is too long for reproduction, naturally leads the doctor to prescribe for the impudent valet, who proposes to pay him a hundred crowns for enough poison to kill his master. The physician is angry and revengeful at the same time at the valet’s dreadful proposition, but, restraining himself, he accepts the gold and gives Thomas in place of poison only a soporific liquor; this the valet brings to his mistress, Marsilie. Now, Antoine, the only son of Marsilie by Phocus, returning from the chase, sees the flagon of liquor, and, mistaking it for wine, swallows the contents at one draught. He falls to the floor unconscious and all believe him dead. Marsilie accuses Fabrice of poisoning his stepbrother; the unfortunate young man is taken before the judge, who condemns him to death; he is about to be executed, when the physician enters on the scene, tells all that has passed, and restores to life the supposed dead Antoine.

Marsilie is tried and found guilty and repudiated by her husband and family; and Fabrice becomes dearer than ever to his father. Without making further commentaries on this piece, we see the place occupied on the stage by medicine in the Middle Ages and the social standing of the physician in polite society. We also note the irregular practice of the doctor, as well as the high standard of professional honor he maintained in many instances.

THE GOUT.

This tragedy, in poetic form, was composed towards the close of the sixteenth century by J. D. L. Blambeausaut. It has only three scenes, and depicts the triumph of the gout. The poet describes an old man overcome by the multiple pains of podagra, praying to obtain some slight respite from the atrocious and agonizing pain he endures. The Gout, an ever malevolent deity, rejects the old man’s prayer for help, but carries him into a gathering of doctors who are vaunting, in mutual admiration society fashion, their power in jugulating all forms of disease and exalting their specifics for every known affection. In order to punish these arrogant disciples of Æsculapius for their presumption, the Gout gives them all the disease that bears his name, and afterwards jeers at their impotent efforts to cure themselves of aching joints.

This tragedy, name given by the author of the poem, is a very curious treatise on the gout in rhyme, in which we find all the pathogenetic theories given credence before the time that medical chemistry revealed the action of an excess of uric acid in the organism. The blood, bile, peccant humors settling in the parts affected were, as we all know, causes attributed to diathesis by the majority of medical authors of the Middle Ages. Thus the gout-afflicted man, in his imprecations against what he calls “the torturer of humanity,” comes to say:

Meantime our patient does not appear to have a robust faith in the humoral theories of his physician, for he adds, in accursing the malady that has ruined his health, that it permits him no repose:

That is to say, that the doctors do not understand how to manage the disease, a common idea among patients who are not cured of their malady as speedily as they desire.

In one of the scenes the gout addresses a pompous eulogy on its power over humanity, and inveighs against those physicians who discover a new specific against gout every day. This list of remedies for the disease is appalling; we cull but a few to satisfy the reader’s curiosity:

Such are a few of the drugs employed against the gout, and certainly we cannot enumerate all the remedies spoken of by this malevolent demon. The treatment of Alexander Trallian, for example, is no less odd than many of the recipes given in this poetic formulary; it was composed of myrrh, coral, cloves, rue, peony and birthwort pounded together and mixed in certain proportions, and prescribed as an antidote to the gout for the space of 365 days, in the following manner: To be taken for 100 consecutive days, and then omitted for thirty days; then taken for another 100 days, with fifteen days omission afterwards; finally, every other day for 360 days. Circumcision was also a remedy, only applicable to Christians for obvious reasons.[98]

This treatment is an example of the methodical system, and “rests upon superstitious gifts,” says Sprengel. But there are some merits discoverable even in this apparent superstition, i.e., the great truth that the gout is a constitutional disease produced by luxury, and consequently incurable by medicines; a severe regimen being imposed, at the same time foolish prescriptions were given; it was the dieting and not the formula that made Alexander Trallian’s treatment so successful. However, it must not be forgotten that some medicines had a powerful effect in attenuating the violence of the gouty attack; it was for this reason that Cœlius Aurelianus resorted to purgatives and mineral waters; and among the drugs used by chance in the Middle Ages were found the flowers and bulbs of colchicum; the haughty Demon of Gout dared not treat this remedy with disdain.

Meantime the Gout addressed the following lines to the physicians and mires of the age.

To call the doctor of ancient times a “vender of Theriacum” was an insult to professional pride. This absurd remedy was invented by one of Nero’s slaves, and held a high place in public estimation. “It was laid down in the pharmacopœias, ad ostentationem artis,” says Pliny, “and enjoyed a reputation that was never justified by its thirty-six ingredients and the varied assortment of inert gums entering into its composition.”

In the third scene of the tragedy, the Demon Gout, recalls to the memory of the doctors of the Middle Ages, its illustrious victims of antiquity.

How many other of the great have wept with the gout?

Then calling his faithful servitors, Pain, Insomnia, and Indigestion, the Demon Gout bids them plunge his fiery darts into his enemies, to burn them with an unquenchable flame:

With this superb peroration, he afflicts all good doctors with the gout and rheumatism. Since that day physicians the world over, says our talented author, J. D. L. Blambeausaut, have been the victims of this horrible malady. Let us now turn to the consideration of a curious hygienic play, no less interesting than that of the Gout,

CONDEMNATION OF HIGH LIVING AND PRAISE OF DIET AND SOBRIETY.[99]

This moral play, to which we might give the title of hygienic poetry, appeared in 1507, under the name of its author, Nicolas de la Chesnaye, along with another work, the latter in prose, on the “Government of the Human Body.”

Nicolas de la Chesnaye was not only a poet but a doctor. He was a physician of enough importance to be personal friend and medical attendant of Louis XII, at whose instigation the poetical play was written. This work is considered by many French critics to be a classic of its kind; it is a poem dealing with all the curious manners and customs of the time, and treats of morality and the stage. In a prologue Nicole de la Chesnaye informs us how he came to be a poet, or, rather, a writer of verses to be recited on the public stage, in which were embodied the hygienic and dietetic precepts of the epoch, together with the medical doctrines in vogue. Let us cite a few lines from this prologue: “Oh, ye who write or attempt to follow copies of ancient works, ye should strive to omit such phrases as are difficult to be understood by the masses of the people; endeavor then to not exceed in quantity and quality their mental capacity and your own understanding. On such an occasion as this, I, who am ignorant as compared to many among ye, have had the hardihood to compose and put in rhyme this little play of mine upon morality. The intention of this work is to make an exterminating war on gluttony, debauchery, inebriety, and avariciousness, and to praise and extol temperance, virtue, sobriety, and generosity, to the end of improving mankind. So in this work I have given the personages of my play the names of different maladies, as, for example, Apoplexy, Epilepsy, Dropsy, Jaundice, Gout, etc., etc.”

The object of the author’s play is thus plainly stated at the outset. In the first act we see Dinner, Supper, and Banquet conniving against honest gentlemen by inviting them to feast. Among the plotters are also Good Company, Fried Meats, Gourmandizer, Drink Hearty, and others. In the midst of the festivities rascals fall on the assembled guests and give them deadly blows; these villains are Apoplexy, Gout, Epilepsy, Gravel, and Dropsy. Almost all the guests present are more or less injured, and upon their complaint their assailants are cited to appear before a court held by Judge Experience, while the attorneys for the plaintiffs and defendants are Remedy, Medical Aid, Sobriety, Diet, and Old Pills. The trial, carried on in rhyme, is piquant and amusing, and ends in the conviction of Supper, who is condemned to wear bread and milk handcuffs. Dinner is doomed to a long exile on penalty of being hung should he return. Supper is well pleased with the light sentence. One of the attorneys abuses wine during the course of his argument for plaintiffs, as, for instance:

He then goes on and gives examples, as, for instance, Alexander the Great killing his foster-brother Clitus at a drinking banquet; he cites the opinions of Saint Jerome and Terrence; he depicts Lot debauching his daughters and Noah exposed to the mockery of his sons; he shows Holofernes decapitated by Judith, and places all these cases to the credit of intemperance. Then he adds a long list of diseases resulting from drink, of which we shall only quote one verse of the original:

In quaint old French all the symptoms of alcoholism are perfectly enumerated. It is evident that the epilepsy mentioned by the author is only the epileptiform convulsion noticed in modern cases of chronic drunkenness.

As to the ictericie, which a modern critic has translated as meaning black humor, it is nothing more than what is now known as cirrhosis of the liver. Nicole de la Chesnaye was a physician; his critical commentator not much of one. We cannot follow this classical author through the innumerable reasons he gives for blaming liquor drinking and his high tributes of praise to the cause of Middle Age temperance, and we cannot quote those original strophes on the ancient satirical poet:

In another scene the drunken revelry of the Banqueters is re-enacted, on the return of the convicts from exile, and another temptation to the weak and young and foolish. In fact, one of the youths present, Folly (Le Fol), is attacked and badly used up by the villain Gravel. The poor fellow cries:

Then follows a comical scene of suffering, couched in such language as would offend modern ears polite, and, therefore, out of respect to the reader omitted.

In this play are many dialogues between Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, and Averrhoes, who discuss medical topics at length, but these are too lengthy for reproduction in this epitomized translation.

The morality of Nicole de la Chesnaye is full of good intentions, but it is questionable whether he accomplished any considerable result in reforming the morals of the Middle Ages; he perhaps fell as short in his aim as modern hygienists on the morality of our own epoch. The same instincts predominate now as in days of antiquity; the society man of to-day is generally a mere digestive tube, serving to keep alive the more or less badly served vital organs.

THE FOLLY OF THE WORLD.

This is a farce by the same Nicole de la Chesnaye. It was acted in 1524, and one of his chief personages in the play depicted a doctor of the period. The following is a short analysis of this really curious piece:

Grandmother Sottie leads to the World several persons whom she desires the latter to watch while plying their avocations; the shoemaker makes his boots too tight always; the dressmaker’s dresses are ever too large; the priest’s masses are said too long or too short. This bad showing on the part of the World’s workers make his mundane majesty sick. He sends a specimen of his urine to the doctor, who, after a scientific examination, declares the World’s brain is affected, and also that his new-found client must be visited in person. On meeting the World he interrogates him as to his health, and asks questions which might serve to make a diagnosis. The World tells the doctor he is no longer afraid of water on the brain, but of being consumed in a deluge of fire. The doctor then utters the following wise and rather satirical observations:

The World is so impressed by the doctor’s remarks that he immediately weds Folly. Ever since, it is needless to remark, the World has enjoyed pleasure without as much dread of fire. It is an easy matter to seize the apologue sought by the author.

Here we see, as early as the sixteenth century, the social reforms begun by medicine and continued up to the eighteenth century. The abbots, priors and other gentry of the Church, who lived in idleness and luxury, holding sinecures for which the masses were taxed; the flatterers of bastard princes, the agents of the rich and aristocratic, ruled the country and made wars costing thousands of lives for the glory of the Church—i.e., themselves. These are the parasites that epidemically attack the World.

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:

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:

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.

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