Dr. FRANgOIS RABELAIS.

H. S. CARTER, M.D., D.P.H.

People who use the word Rabelaisian as readily as they would Shakes- pearean or Dickensian seldom know anything about Francois Rabelais and his amazing works. Vaguely they think of his writings as something hardly fit for the light of day, to be sought for furtively in the dark corners ?f antiquarian book-shops. And it is true that these writings are dis- figured here and there by scatological lines and verses and by obscenities resembling those graffiti to be seen scrawled on the walls of public places ; but always in the most overt and jolly manner. So the author is visua- lized as a gross buffoon of the later middle ages whose legacy to humanity a large collection of tap-room anecdotes and smoke-room stories related ' with Bacchic exuberance, rather than one who plumbed the true Well and Abyss of encyclopaedic learning ', and gave a valuable reflection ?f the sentiment and character of his time. The humour of Rabelais is ' not in his occasional indecency. Lord Bacon called Rabelais the Grand ' Jester of France ', but Coleridge wrote beyond a doubt Rabelais was among the deepest as well as the boldest thinkers of his age', and classed him with the great creative minds, Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes. He lived during the years of transition from the Middle Ages to the early Renaissance, and reflected the outlook of more enlightened men, their thirst for knowledge and their impatience with the suppressions and restrict- tions which had long shackled the activities of the human mind. He was an. exponent of early Renaissance humanism in the broadest sense, and revolted strongly, despite the danger, against mediaeval asceticism. Gross he is, but it is a healthy grossness, though he cracks terrible jokes even when arguing on the subtlest questions in ethics, theology, politics, education or on any serious problem of the day. He exposed man's chaotic imagination and its sensualities. Rabelais was essentially a scholar and consorted with the most eminent in all his environments. The quest for knowledge was for him the salt of life. As he was a doctor of medicine, though with him medicine was hardly more than the outer skin, his books are full of the quaintest and strangest kind of medical lore, and as he was a monk and a priest, something of a lawyer, a diplomat, a classicist as Well as a lover of humanity and the countryside, he is brimful of common- sense and surveys the scene with a penetrating and understanding eye. He forged a powerful weapon against the impostures of mediaeval learn- lng and disguised his attacks on the follies of men in a roaring, ranting, drunken, joyous rigmarole in which the vocabulary of his age is too small f?r him, so that he has to invent words and resort to the oddest quirks to Satisfy the exuberance of his mind and his prodigious volubility. Chautea- 267 268 GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL

' briand called him the Creator of French prose He was a great genre painter, a great satirist, and a stylist in his own right.

His Life. Beyond his extant writings, a little correspondence and a few docu- ments, local registers and deeds to supplement tradition, there is not much to build on. It was formerly held that Rabelais was born at an inn, La Lamproie in Chinon, at the end of the fifteenth century, and was an inn-keeper's son, which belief would naturally be fostered by the riotous enthusiasm of his writings. Did not his hero Pantagruel abolish thirst in the land of the Dipsodes ? His father apparently did own a house in the street of La Lamproie which later was turned into an inn. It was also variously asserted that his father was an apothecary but he was of neither of these trades . Modern researches, chiefly at the hands of members of the Societe des Etudes Rabelaisiennes have disproved earlier assumptions and destroyed popular legends. In fact, his father, Antoine Rabelais, was an advocate, Licencie es Lois, a person of local standing and the owner of several properties including farms and vineyards at La Deviniere, La Pommardiere, Gravot and Chevigny-em-Vallee. The cows that provided milk for the infant Gargantua grazed on the pre Rabelais near Poutille. At Chinon, Henry II of England died in 1189, and with the town is associated the name of Agnes Sorel, mistress of Charles VII. At Chinon too, Charles VII met Jeanne d'Arc in 1429. Francois Rabelais, self-styled Abstractor of the Quintessence and Patriarch of the Sacred Isles, was born in February, 1494, at Fa Deviniere, a few miles from Chinon. He was thus a native of Touraine, home of Balzac and Descartes, the garden of France, flower-laden land of the grape, dotted with castles and manor-houses, and watered by the winding Loire. ' This was what he called his cow-country ', and he praised Chinon as ancient and of great renown. Well-born and well-bred, he no doubt acquired as a boy in this countryside, some of the power of close observa- tion which he never lost and which was sharpened by his long education. He was a younger son and destined for the cloister, upon which he seems to comment in his Fifth book where he writes what makes it probable that he was tonsured before he was nine. He first went to school at the Benedictine monastery at Seuille, and plunged into the study of L,atin grammar, and the memorising of Latin maxims and precepts. He thought little of this early education, for similar schooling made Gargantua a booby, and contrasts it with another system linked with Erasmus, from whose works he was to borrow lavishly- There is a letter to Erasmus extant, but it is doubtful if ever he met the great humanist of Rotterdam. From Seuille he went to the Franciscan Convent of La Baumette at Angers to complete his education before enter- ing the cloister. Here he probably met Geoffroi d'Estissac, later Bishop RABELAIS?CARTER 269 of Maillezais in Poitou, and may have become acquainted with the du Bellay family, his future patrons. Jean du Bellay was afterwards Bishop of Paris and Cardinal. Both these prelates were most useful to Rabelais. His life is shadowy in these early days, but about 1511 he entered the Franciscan monastery at Fontenay-le-Comte in Poitou, and it was here, above all places, that he laid the foundations of his erudition. He must have been here for the next ten years. He was a Friar minor in 1521, and had gained the friendship of Pierre Amy, a scholar from Orleans. Together they pursued Hellenic studies, though Greek was anathema to the Church of that time. The vulgate version of the Scriptures was not to be challenged and the study of Greek was regarded as irreligious. Rabelais and Am}7 wrote to Guillaume Bude, the first scholar in France, then the only rival to Erasmus, whose name is only saved from oblivion by his association with Rabelais. Bude was the King's Secretary and had protection, and was the spiritual father of all Greek students in France. When the convent authorities confiscated the Greek texts of Amy and Rabelais, Bude called ' this action an insult to the muses ? They had to get out, nevertheless, and after consulting the sortes Virgilianae, Amy fled to Orleans, and Rabelais, who had local friends, realising that the monastery was no place for him, obtained, perhaps through d'Estissac, an indulgence from the Pope to move to a Benedictine monastery. Bishop d'Estissac was Prior to Figuge, near Poitiers, and here Rabelais went into residence, perhaps as the Bishop's secretary. It seems to be at this period that Rabelais acquired his great knowledge of botany, so much so, that when he went to Montpellier he was able immediately to lecture 011 medicinal herbs. Rabelais makes the youthful Pantagruel study at Poitiers and visit the other universities of France ; Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, Avignon, Orleans, Paris, and this itinerary is surely a reflection of his own travels when attached to the Bishop of Maillezais. This was in the years 1527-1530 and it is almost certain that Rabelais, already a theologian, studied medicine at Paris, and perhaps at other places during this time. Like Villon almost a century before, he 110 doubt heard the winter wind whistle down the Street of Straw. In 1530 he signed the students' register at Montpellier and wore a red gown. In a few months he graduated as Bachelor, but it was not until 1537 that he became Doctor of Medicine officially, though long before that he practised medicine. As a bachelor he lectured on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates and the Ars Medica of Galen, not from the Latin text, but from the Greek. Montpellier followed the Arabic tradition, but Rabelais chose Greek authors. Rabelais was one of the first to translate the Aphorisms of Hippocrates into Latin. There is some record that Rabelais dissected a hanged man, for Etienne Dolet wrote a poem, congratulating ' the subject' upon the eminence of his dissector. Dissection was becoming more common at Montpellier. Dolet, burnt as a heretic in 1546, was a 270 GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL scholar, a printer, possibly a murderer and a violent controversialist, ' who was friendly with Rabelais for some years, and esteemed him as the honour and sure glory of the healing art', until they quarrelled over an edition of the first and second books of Rabelais which Dolet printed. Rabelais went to I,yons to get his lectures published. He also edited an edition of the Epistolae medicinales of Giovanni Manardi (1462-1536), physician to Ariosto and the d'Este family. Manardi was one of the first to discard impure Arabian texts for the original Greek. Manardi, one of ' whose aphorisms was it is better to observe the pulse than the grouping of the stars ', would appeal especially to Rabelais. The year 1532 was a productive one in Rabelais' life, for thus late he came to literature. In August appeared a book of folk-tales, Les grandes et inestimable Cronicques da Grand et Enorme Geant Gargantua. It carried no author's or publisher's name, but it is in line with the old myths of Merlin and Arthur carried down in Breton folk-lore. How much Rabelais wrote of this is uncertain, but he said that more copies of it were sold in two months than of bibles in nine years, which is not remarkable since the Church was against the free reading of the Bible. If any of it was his work, he must have been getting his hand in, for Pantagruel (the first book) appeared in 1532, and the publication of a series of Almanacks begins with Pantagrueline Prognostication early in 1533. Just before Pantagruel appeared Rabelais was made physician to the hospital at Lyons, where, it was said, he reduced the death rate by two or three per cent. He must have had varied ex- perience here for he controlled about two hundred beds, some of them holding more than one patient, and the hospital dealt with all types of illness including infectious diseases. He is reputed to have invented surgical instuments for the reduction of fractures of the femur and for dealing with strangulated hernia. In 1533 the Court arrived at Lyons for the marriage of the Dauphin to Catherine cle Medici. Jean du Bellay was with the court and met Rabelais, with the result that when he passed through later on embassy to Rome, he was treated by Rabelais for sciatica and took his physician along with him. So Rabelais forsook Lyons in 1534 and went to meet the learned men of Rome and to collect herbs and drugs not procurable in France. He was rather disappointed with Rome, but he went again with du Bellay, who was made Cardinal in 1535. Cardinal du Bellay had to gain the favour of the new Pope Paul III for France, and the conduct of the King of England, Henry VIII, who disregarded Papal Supremacy, had to be palliated. Some of the negotiations are recorded in Rabelais' confidential letters to d'Estissac. Rabelais' Gargantua probably first appeared late in 1534. Its author was seldom in one place for long, but wherever he was he seems to have practised medicine all his life, at Lyons, Montpellier, Rome, Turin, Metz, among other places. Sometimes he was in favour at Court and sometimes virtually an exile. His relationship RABELAIS?CARTEL' 271

with the du Bellays involved him in political affairs, inextricably mixed up with the Church. He was present at Aigue Mortes in 1538 when the Fmperor Charles V met the French King Francis I. Although, with the help of the Papacy, they made a treaty in 1538, peace was not long kept. In 1537 Rabelais was at Montpellier, and according to W. F. Smith he occupied a chair corresponding with that of pathology, when expounding Hippocrates in his lectures for the grande ordinaire. He became M.D. in this year. About 1540 he took service with Cardinal du Bellay's brother Guillaume, Seigneur de Fangey, at Turin, and in 1541 they were together in Paris. Benvenuto Cellini was at Fontainbleau at this time, and the two great men may have met, for they both relate a similar anecdote in their writings, that of Friar John ripping up an old woman's feather-bed. Viceroy du Bellay returned to Turin, but he was a sick man, niuch troubled with gout, and died on his return journey to Paris in 1543, Rabelais helped to embalm his body, and was left an annuity. Early in 1546 Rabelais, on the publication of his famous Third Book, found it advisable to retire to Metz, where he had protection and a friend in the Seigneur de St, Ayl, for his book had been censured before Easter. He joined the hospital and was made town physician. He was in Metz about a year, but in 1547 he was with Cardinal du Bellay again and on the way to Rome. They were there for about two years. In 1549 Rabelais was again in Tyons and under Royal privilege finished his Fourth Book of which he had hitherto dared to print eleven chapters only. The Cardinal returned to Rome but without Rabelais. He had malaria near Florence and got Cosimo de Medici to send him a doctor. Knowledge of Rabelais' last years is scanty. His books were attacked ' by Calvin, whom he hated, and by Puy Herbault who said he had much wit but little reason ', and rated him as an impure contaminated fellow. The vSorbonne was also bitterly hostile. From both Catholics and Protest- ants came efforts to get his work suppressed. It is more than likely that the Church would have burned Rabelais if they had got the chance. Rabelais did not return to Rome with the Cardinal in 1549, who, fulfilling his brother's intentions, appointed Rabelais, in 1551, to the benefices of Meudon and Christophe-de-Jambet. He fulfilled his duties desultorily or not at all in these places. The now famous Cure of Meudon resigned both his cures in January 1553 and three months later died in Paris (April 9, 1553), perhaps in a house in the Rue de Jardins. Though he was no cham- pion of the Church he had performed its offices and now it eased his pass- ' :ng and legend makes him murmur, in character to the end, I am going ' ?n a long journey ; they have greased my boots already : or variously, I am going to seek the Great Perhaps. Draw the curtain, the farce is played out '. But nothing at first hand is known of his death. So went Rabelais, whose name made monks and priests furious, and other men laugh uproariously : humanist, theologian, legist, physician, traveller. 272 GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL

A monk and a doctor, and surely first among physicians whose truancy produced immortal literature. His Writings. Rabelais' work is not everybody's reading; he is often so very earthy, but he is read as a humanist and moral teacher and dissector of society ; as a great satirist and for his original mind ; as a teller of tall stories, many of them improper ; for his extraordinary language and love of words; for his laughter-provoking superabundance and for the curious problems, literary, medical, legal and allegorical, which his writings suggest. He had great vogue in his own time. Cardinal du Bellay is said to have refused a learned man a place at his table, because he had not read the Book. We have Rabelais' masterpiece Gargantua, and the four books of Pantagruel, in the transmutation of Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, who translated the first three (1653 and 1694), and of Peter Motteux who finished the other two (1693-4). Pantagruel, Roi des Dipsodes restitite en son naturel avec ses Faicts et Proueses Espouvantables par M. Alcofribas Nasier- the pseudonym is an anagram of the author's name?first appeared in 1532, and Gargantua in 1534. Thereafter at intervals, three more books of Pantagruel appeared, the last after the author's death. Doubt has been cast on the total authenticity of the last or fifth book. The whole work was first collected in 1567. Gargantua and Pantagruel, his son, are giants and heroes of an amazing series of adventures related with incredible exaggeration and the grossest burlesques of the heroes in romances and chivalry. Urquhart's splendid genius added to the super- abundance of Rabelais and carried exaggeration farther. Urquhart used Randle Cotgrave's French dictionary (1611) in his translation, and, by his own facility in finding words, emphasized and amplified the Master, especially that side of the writings he found most congenial, with the result that the extraordinary fecundity of Rabelais, which nevertheless expressed itself with at least some restraint and concision, blooms in English with a magnificent efflorescence, due more to Urquhart than to Rabelais. Motteux in the last two books is no match for Urquhart in the aromatic English of the seventeenth century. They both depart from the text and often reinforce Rabelais' onslaughts and abuse, but they both gilded the lily. The fullest flavour can only be obtained by those who can read the old French of the earliest editions, and are fully acquainted with the sources of Rabelais' erudition?the Vulgate, the Schoolmen, the Greek and Iyatin poets, the ancient historians and antiquaries, physicians and writers on law and the humanities, as well as moralities and mystery plays : for the works are crammed with allusions only to be detected by scholars versed in mediaeval letters. Many attempts have been made to explain the significance and inten- tion of Rabelais, and to read into his allegories and calculated buffoonery RABELAIS CARTER 273 what may have been far from his mind. The work in general is so desul- tory, that it is impossible to give a coherent abstract. It boils, it bubbles and splashes extravagantly, but the slap-stick, low comedy and clowning hide shrewd rapier thrusts, often deadly, of irony and satire. To summarize briefly the chief events of the extravaganza ; Gargantua is born from his mother's ear. He sprang and entered the hollow vein, climbed by the diaphragm to above his mother's shoulders, 'where the vein divides itself in two ', made his way to the left and issued from her ' left ear, yelling, Some drink !, some drink !' Gargantua's childhood and education are described in true Rabelaisian fashion, though Rabelais is deadly serious about education, and at loggerheads with the prevailing system. Then Gargantua travels. He steals the great bells of Notre Dame in Paris to hang round his mare's neck, and treats very grossly the learned citizens of the town. Rabelais' penchant for lists of words and synonyms and for litanies is exemplified early in accounts of the young giant's games and his play with his nurses. The comic spirit is soon in full blast. The great war between Grandgousier (Gargantua's father), an easy-going king, and Picrochole, King of Feme, an arbitrary despot intent on conquest fills several chapters, and the amazing slaughter caused by the valiance of Friar John of the Gobbets, gives Rabelais cause to display his anatomical knowledge. After the battle Gargantua combs cannon- balls out of his hair. His father mistook them for lice and exclaims' Are ' these the sparrow-hawks of Montague College ? Rabelais must have suffered in some of the lousier places in Paris, but Calvin, whose ideas he detested, studied at Montague College. After the war, on the suggestion of that immortal creation Friar John (Brother Jean des Entommeures) the man of action, comes the founding of the Abbey of Theleme, a fanci- ful institution and academy for co-education with the motto Fay ce que vouldras. Rabelais here stresses the profound importance of all that is opposed to the forced abstinence, idleness, ignorance and hidden self- indulgence of some monastic societies he knew and detested, for he had seen the accidia caused by the monotony of vocationless religion. The key-phrase to Gargantua and indeed to all the tempestuous drive ' ?f Rabelais is his Vogue la galere, untranslatable perhaps except as let her ' ' ' rip or let go the painter ; and Rabelais certainly lets it rip. Expos- tulation about excessive drinking, and wine flows merrily in Rabelais ' brings the retort, I never drink more than a sponge.' Another sardonic ' remark, 110 doubt valid at that time, is drunk as an Englishman Pantagruel is Gargantua's son, and like him a giant and a chip off the old block, though the fun is a little less extravagant in the second book. Pantagruel was recalled from Paris when the Dipsodes broke out after the death of his father and invaded Utopia. The chapters relating to Paris tell a good deal about student life there, including the description ?f the Library of St. Victor with its collection of books satirizing the 274 GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL mediaeval collections of scholastic rubbish. The voice of old Paris, the voices of her bells and her people reach us in Rabelais as they do in Villon. There is an important scheme of education in this book, full of enthusiasm for the restoration of letters by the Renaissance, and deprecating the neglect of learning by the Schoolmen. Rabelais is indebted to More's Utopia for some of his notions. And now Panurge comes on the scene and is the most important person in Pantagruel. He is a lean-shanked narrow-nosed rascal whom Pantagruel picks up in Paris. It was suggested by Gautier that he was drawn from Francois Villon. There is none to compare with him except Falstaff. He is Rabelais' greatest creation. Saintsbury thought that ' the main characteristics of Panurge were an absence of morality in a wide Aristotelian sense, combined with the presence of almost all other good qualities '. Panurge's craftiness amounts to genius. The third book is almost entirely devoted to his exploits and adventures. He speaks most languages, even French, was fond of women, but subject to panic, eternally short of money, and relates his experiences with gross exaggera- ' tion. He lived on his wits. An evil-doer, a cheat, a drinker, a vagabond, ' a libertine if ever there was one in Paris ', and for all the rest, the best son in the world.' Panurge remains the same throughout the whole saga. Pantagruel mellows into a great and wise king who interpreted things justly. Kven Friar John becomes more human, but Panurge remains clever, witty, even learned in cunning, but always soul-less, a wanderer and a vagabond. He was the one to make good the proverb ' The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be. ' The devil was well, devil a monk was he.' Friar John is the embodiment of hearty, healthy animalism, wide open to the sunshine of life, better at a fight than at a sermon, who used his crucifix like a sword, in contrast to some of Rabelais' earlier companions of the tonsure. In the Pantagruel books all the characters get into more wars as in the old romances. It is the caprice of Panurge that determines the course of the story of which he becomes the compere. He wants to get married and the whole of the famous third book is devoted to various devices and resorts to find out whether it will be wise to do so. The end is a voyage, calling at many islands, Pope-fig, Papimany, Chitterling-land, inhabited by strange creatures who often satirize Rabelais' dislikes, to consult the oracle of the Divine Bottle. The last two books of Rabelais are so occupied and many queer experiences are described. When at last the oracle is broached, only the word Trine ! is vouchsafed, which might be the solution of Panurge's difficulty, and may be intended to be an answer to the riddle of the universe. True philosophy lies in the bottle. We must all drink of Tife. L,et us drink copiously. There is a smack of the Preacher about the conclusions ; vanitas vanitatum. RABELAIS?CARTER 275

Many characters must go unmentioned, but some must be paraded Thaumast (Sir Thomas More) the English philosopher who disputes with Panurge by signs only, and shared a great drinking bout with Pantagruel, ' ' not one but drank twenty or thirty hogsheads ; Her Trippa, another philosopher who attempts to solve Panurge's problem by divination and gives Rabelais another opportunity to display his learning; Dr. Rondibilis, modelled on a physician of Montpellier, who advises Panurge how to distract his thoughts from the contemplation of marriage, and succeeds very well in diverting his readers ; Judge Bridlegoose, whose method of arriving at a decision was to throw dice. Chance had always ruled his verdicts, four thousand of them, and he is now called in old age to defend and explain his judgements. Pantagruel begs for his acquittal in consideration of forty years' good service. He should of course have been elevated to an Upper House. There are man}7 more significant characters and hosts of small fry. Queen Quintessence, whose abstractors cure most diseases, Bishop Hominas, Raminogrobis the poet, Grippeminaud on the bench and the grasping chats fourres (furred law-cats) described with fierce satire. All are touched by the Master's magic and stand forth for ever on their own feet. Rabelais is prodigal with learning, and no man in history can ever have been so palpably shaken with laughter. It is Homeric. He quotes Plato and Galen on the dog with the marrow-bone, and suggests that perusal of his treatise will reveal under the wrappings of comedy, glorious doctrines and dreadful mysteries. The bone of his writings is humour, and the marrow pure wisdom effectually disguised by the bone. Crack the bone, he says in effect, and see what you find in the marrow about religion, politics, our public state and the life economical. The Gargantua and first Pantagruel he claims to have written to beguile his patients in his absence. The famous third book he offers in the interests of his countrymen in the war ' against the Emporor Charles V, and rolls what he calls his Diogenical tub ', being unable to otherwise assist in fortifying Paris and preparing for war. His fourth book he intends to support French policy against the pretensions of the Roman Church and its doctrine, or perhaps the ' perversion of it. His enemies are the false Theologues, who for the greater ' ' part are Hereticks and false lawyers who never go to law with one ' another ', and false physicians who never take any physic '. Although there are few chapters in which he does not fire a shot at the Church and the Monasteries, he defends himself vigorously, in his letter of dedication to Cardinal Chatillon, against charges of heresy, and claims to be a better Christian than his detractors. It was customary to ' suspect physicians of irreligion, and Rabelais himself writes where there be three physicians there will be two free-thinkers He had certainly suffered from a surfeit of the Church but no one can, however, doubt that Rabelais was a Christian who reads his confessions of faith in Pantagruel's 270 GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL marvellous lines about the death of Pan in the fourth book. And having revealed his faith, the great comedian let fall' tears as big as ostrich eggs Rabelais attacked folly and obscurantism wherever he found them. He let in sun and wind to clear the smell of the old theology of the Middle Ages. It was his delight to tilt at the pedantry of Scholarship, of the Church, of Medicine, of Politics and of Education. He indulges in the wildest buffoonery and then falls suddenly deadly serious. He was exe- crated by some in his lifetime. The Sorbonne pronounced him an indecent tosspot. Puy Herbault, a monk, attacked him viciously as a mad, drunken ' fellow and bawdy trickster, and he hit back at the mad herb-stinking Hermits, gulligutted dunces of the Cowl Calvin attacked him frequently. After his death Joachim du Bellay, the poet, of the family of Rabelais' noble patrons, lampooned him, and even Ronsard poet of the exquisite Mignonne, allons voir si la rose, joined in. But he had Bude, Tiraqueau the great jurist, Bishop Maillezais, the du Bellay brothers and other scholars to uphold him, and the merit of his chraracter is not in doubt. He declared daughter to be one of the rights of men, and his own is up- roarious and rumbustious. His creed was roughly, let every man possess his soul in cheerfulness, let him walk in the sunshine of life while he may, let him eat, drink, laugh, talk and have faith in the Great Architect. But he was concerned to find out the future and considered what means can be used to pursue truth. As for his stories, he got a lot of them from the classics, from Italian writers and from his own countrymen, and wove them into his glittering tapestry. Withal he showed an unexpected lack of interest in women, and was indeed anti-feminist, despite his illegitimate son Theodulus whose early death he mourned. Rabelais the Physician. Rabelais, who was contemporary with Linacre and Paracelsus, Vesalius and Leonardo, was at one with the Neo-Platonists who fostered the resurgence of Hellenism and the study of Greek medicine. In his own day he was held in repute as a physician and pioneer of humanism and enlightenment. He was a friend of princes and of the poor. He was in turn a teacher of medicine, a hospital physician, a medical editor and a city physician. He had experience of general practice among rich and poor, but for all his original mind he could offer no better counsel to the young ' doctor than Go back carefully to the books of the Greek, Arab and L,atin doctors without condemning the Talmudists and the Cabbalists and by frequent anatomies (dissections) acquire perfect knowledge of the other world which is man In medicine Rabelais kept an open mind. He knew well the importance of the personal factor to the successful doctor, and agreed with the Greek physicians that the well-being of patients must always be consulted. He would have agreed that the most important person in an operating theatre is the patient. It is natural then to find a good deal of medicine in his writings, some because the writer was a RA BEL A1S?CA RTER 277

' physician, some by specific intent. He quotes as a proverb Happy is the ' physician who is called in at the end of an illness and he warns, that physician will hardly be thought very careful of the health of others who ' neglects his own And again, the practice of Physic has been properly enough compared by Hippocrates to a fight and a farce acted by three persons, the Patient, the Physician and the Disease'; a combination of any ' two defeats the other. Half satirically he pronounces there be more old drunkards than old physicians '. Rabelais is heavily indebted to Galen and Hippocrates, from whom he often quotes directly or obliquely. This is the daily routine, and the canonical hours according to the doctors, for those who would live a healthy life, ' Lever a cinq, diner a. neuf ' Souper a cinq, coucher a neuf.' In the Fourth Book the travellers, seeking the Divine Bottle reached ' Sneaking Island, where Shrovetide reigned, a merry-chinned demi-giant, father and foster-father of physicians ', of whom Pantagruel had heard much. The hoary rascal was not on view,but was anatomised by Xenomones, Iraverseur des voyes perilleuses. Here follow two of Rabelais' lists, com- paring anatomical parts with common objects?mostly unrecognisable comparisons today?though efforts have been made to equate them. ' The heart like cope ; the liver like a double tongued mattock ; the lungs like a prebend's fur gown ; the kidneys like a trowel; hair like a scrubbing brush ; tongue like a jews-harp ', and so on. This is the famous Anatomy of Lent. The Arab physicians Averrhoes and Avicenna are referred to in the Pantagrueline Prognostication and elsewhere. In one of his Almanacks Rabelais refers to Hippocrates' aphorism, vita brevis, ars longa, and he ' quotes Galen, Nature has made nothing without reason '. The bland drink barley-water, approved by both Hippocrates and Galen is noticed, though they had little use for it in Grandgousier's kingdom. He quotes Pliny and Hippocrates on hot mineral springs and prescribes a huge pill of scammony, cassia and rhubarb for Pantagruel. There is more than a little about medicinal plants. Smith, whose writings are valuable to the student ?f Rabelais, enumerates about two hundred, mostly in Pliny's nomencla- ture, though some are from Galen and Discorides. Rabelais, like Gesner, Was a botanist, though hardly of the same calibre. Many of his descrip- tions are full of physiological knowledge. Gargantua was an eleven months' child, and Rabelais displays much erudition in a discussion on the probable legitimacy of a child born eleven months after its father's death. There is much quoting from the classics, and not a little low comedy, and speculation 011 what Rabelais calls 'the pretty perquisite of a superfoetation '. There is anatomical knowledge also in the description of how Gargantua was born from his mother's ear via the vena cava, conducting upwards to the throat, which conies 278 GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL from Galen. The green jasper ornament worn on the infant's great gold chain was an amulet against epilepsy and other ailments. Rabelais records snow-blindness, which affected Xenophen's men, and which Galen mentions. There are also references to death from sudden joy, in which Cicero, Pliny, L,ivy and others are quoted. Uncontrollable diarrhoea due to fear is, needless to say, a subject for humour. During the terrific war between Gargantua and Picrochole, more ana- tomical knowledge appears in his descriptions of the wounds inflicted by the tremendous thwackings of Friar John and his men. The anatomy is ' mostly of the head and neck. A sword wound revealed the two meninges or films that enwrap the brain Modern anatomy lists three, dura, pia and arachnoid. In his Third Book, Rabelais describes the formation of the blood from the food and its passage through the liver and kidneys, ' lungs and heart. The description is based on Galen. Life consisteth in blood, blood is the seat of the soul : therefore the chiefest work of the microcosm is to be making blood continually The blood reaches the brain at last and is made fine and subtle within the rete mirabile, a tangled plexus or knot of vessels and glands in the brain, according to Galen. Vesalius corrected this notion. One would hardly expect to meet with a reference to tropical medicine, but when the poet Raminogrobis is thought to be suffering from worms, Epistemon, who had been Pantagruel's tutor, and who was at Mont- pellier with Rabelais, suggests that he may be infested, as are the Egyptians ' with those litte speckled dragons which the Arabians call meden This is surely the Guinea worm Drancunculus medinensis. Among other ' ' curious references is the belief that a serpent (round worm) can be tempted out of a man's stomach by a bowl of milk. Pantagruel, out of Hippocrates, corrects this story of Friar John's. Pantagruel agrees with Hippocrates that it is wicked to attribute to God and the Saints the infliction of illness. Quinsy and scrofula (King's Evil) are mentioned and ' the pericardium is described as the capsule of the heart The second ' ' cervical vertebra is described as dentiform (Hippocrates called it the ' tooth '). Among the many cures by the Abstractors of Queen Quintes- sence is that of Rouen ague, which is syphilis, (Motteux calls it Covent Garden Gout) by touching the second cervical vertebra three times with a wooden shoe. There are many references to syphilis in Rabelais. The Queen, who was eighteen hundred years old, having been born in the time of Aristotle, cured many diseases, without so much as touching the sick, some by music from an organ?a very strange organ made from herbs (the bellows made of rhubarb etc.). She played them tunes and they were all cured ; deaf, blind or dumb. Some of her acolytes cured men of ' ' dropsies ', tympanies, ascites and hyposarcides by striking them on the belly nine times with a hatchet. Here Rabelais ridicules empirical methods of cure and those who seek a universal remedy. The way to make old RABELAIS?CARTER 279 men young was to induce alopecia or ophiasis (in a curious manner) by which they cast hair and skin, so that their youth is renewed like the Phoenix's. Rabelais' conceits are as many as they are outrageous. On Windy Island, where they live on wind, every ailment is due to Ven- ' tosity : for the sick they use bellows as we use clysters He derides by burlesque complex and absurd methods of treatment and scoffs at the magic and superstition still infecting the practice of medicine. He comments on the quacks and charlatans who exploit suggestion and mystery, who batten on credulity, il faur mentir par nombre impair ; (every other word a lie). The formation of Panurge's thorax is pronounced upon unfavourably and Hippocrates quoted that people with such chests are liable to catarrh. Consumptive patients, however weak and wasted, are cured by making them monks for three months ; 'if they did not grow fat and plump in the monastic state, they would never be fattened in this world either by nature or artGout is mentioned, both hot and cold gout. Gargantua is given hellebore?old Burton's remedy against melancholy?to rid him of his perverse habits of mind, before starting him on a new system of education. This must be one of the earliest references to 'brain-washing '. Fevers are cured by hanging a fox-tail in the patient's left hand. Rondibilis, the physician, gives Panurge five remedies in the interests of continence. Wine?in excess ; certain drugs from plants?water-lily, willow-twigs, woodbine, honeysuckle, tamarisk; and the skin of a hippo- potamus?all presumed anaphrodisiacs : hard manual work : fervent study and lastly and paradoxically, excessive venery. Panurge declares for the last ; anyone can have the others. Rondibilis warns strongly against idleness. Diagnosis by inspection of urine is mentioned, and Rondibilis counsels (from Hippocrates) that when a woman is sick one should always examine her abdomen. There are many other casual references to medical matters Rabelais, but such killing diseases as plague, typhus and malaria, which were endemic in Europe at that time are ignored. He remarks 011 one occasion that' this year the catarrhs seem to have descended from the head to the legs', possibly in reference to a variation in some of the influ- enza-like fevers that he had noticed. Lastly, there is the divine herb Pantagruelion, so-called because lJantagruel invented it. Rabelais devotes the last few chapters of Book Three to a long disquisition on Pantagruelion, which is hemp (cannabis) used medicinally for two thousand years. Known to us as a cerebral intoxicant, an analgesic soporific, Rabelais says it is good for nerves, con- vulsions and for mollifying the joints, but he is eloquent and learned 011 the wider uses of the plant ?in the manufacture of sails, ropes, paper, clothes and he expands as he goes on, invoking industry, commerce, voyaging in ships and most human occupations to show the manifold uses of the 280 GLASGOW MEDICAL JOURNAL plant and its products (including its use for hanging). Many other plants are mentioned in these chapters as Rabelais airs his botanical knowledge. Pantagruel loads his ships with Pantagruelion when the expedition sets out from St. Malo in search of the Divine Bottle and the Oracle. This famous digression about Pantagruelion seems to be the author's symboli- cal way of emphasizing our need for fortifying ourselves in this world with determination, endurance, equanimity and courage. In effect, his prescription is, provide yourself with a good store of Pantagruelion and, come what may, you can face destiny, and laugh at L,ife. Epilogue. Rabelais borrowed freely from other writers, ancient and modern, and his own works have been drawn upon by many later authors, French and English. Moliere, Brantome, Montaigne are indebted to Rabelais ; Ben Jonson, Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, Butler, Sterne and even Scott ' took what they thought they might require. The Laughing Philosopher' was so prodigious and profuse that his abundance has been brimming over ever since his own day. For four hundred years his stories have entertained the world and his inner meaning puzzled his students and commentators. There is strong common-sense beneath the pyrotechnic display of wit and humour. Rabelais dreamed of levels of liberty much beyond the thought of his time and anticipated the discontent with old beliefs which was to increase in later centuries. The essential Rabelais was one of those who helped to pass on the torch of learning, burning more brightly because he had handled it, to other wayfarers in humanism and medicine all over the world. If he contributed nothing of major importance to scientific medicine, he had a wide range of understanding and an enquiring mind ; he glimpsed the light, followed the gleam and was hot against cant, hypocrisy and tyranny. And, at least, he left the world a great legacy of laughter, which only half veils his high and serious purpose. He said the things he wanted to say with the utmost levity, taking the licence of a jester in order to gain a hearing. Bibliography. Editions of Rabelais' works in French and English are not difficult to obtain. There is an edition of Urquliart and Motteux's translation in Everyman's Library (2 vols.). Other editions contain letters and minor writings in addition to Gargantua and Pantagrael, and have notes by Ducliat, Ozell and others. Besant, W. (1879) Rabelais London : Blackwood Lsfranc, A. (1953) Rabelais Paris : Albin Michel Powys, J. Cowper (1948) Rabelais London : Lane Smith, W. F. (1893 Rabelais a new translation, with notes London : A. P. Watt Smith, W. F. (1918). Rabelais in his Writings Camb. Univ. Press Wliibley, C. (1904). Literary Portraits London : Constable Willeocks, M. P. (1950). The Laughing Philosopher London: Allen and Unwin NOTE.?Since t his paper was written a new translation of Gargantua ami Pantagruel, by J. M. Coliei). lias appeared in Penguin books. It provides a robust version lor the modern reader.