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._