Note 46 — THE GREAT EPIDEMICS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

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.”