[In the essay that follows, Dixon examines Rabelais's views on morbus gallicus, or syphilis, arguing that Rabelais consistently criticized those in authority who had the power to influence behavior and thought regarding the disease.]

The period 1532-1534 marks a date in the history of western culture, for these years saw the appearance of Pantagruel and Gargantua respectively. From the first line on the first page, the contemporary reader entered a hitherto unknown world: “Beuveurs très illustres, et vous, véroléz très précieux (car à vous, non à aultres, sont dédiéz mes escriptz).”¹ This apostrophe is repeated nearly 20 years and half a life-time later: “Beuveurs infatigables, et vous vérolléz horrifiques.”² What does Rabelais mean? What is the significance of the beuveurs and the véroléz? What, if any, is the connexion between them? The former, linked with wine, will become a theme to be developed and to undergo subtle changes throughout the work. The latter will recur here and there in the work, and represent a small part of a larger concern and theme. Viewed in the broad, they might be taken to represent good health and ill, medicine and the physician, and the relationship which unites them.

In this paper, it is my intention to examine, not the larger concern, but the disease in question—morbus gallicus, as was its usual learned name: the French disease—and the references made to it by Rabelais in his works.

It is as well to explain at the outset, since this disease is rather an unusual one to occupy a noticeable place in a literary³ work, why it has a place at all. For, in fact, there are no fewer than twenty-seven specific mentions of it by the terms vérole ans vérolé(s) and a few other mentions and allusions by other terms⁴.

In 1494-1495 Charles VIII of France led an army through Italy—on the first aggressive military excursion by the French outside their boundaries for 200 years—to lay claim to the throne of Naples, which was held by the Spanish crown. Samuel Eliot Morison describes it thus: “During the absence of Christophe Columbus on his Second Voyage, Charles VIII, king of France, with fifty thousand men marched down to Naples, and marched back again. All Europe watched this victorious procession with delight or apprehension, and followed the inglorious retreat with amusement and scorn. But before long it was clear that something else had happened, … people began to itch, to feel burning pains in the body, and to break out in loathsome chancres, pustules, skin eruption and ‘pestiferous buboes’. In Italy they called this disease the mal francese, or morbus gallicus, which for many years remained the most common medical term. The French, believing that the disease was imported by the retreating army, called it ‘mal de Naples’. From France the scourge crossed to England, where as early as 1497 we find it called the ‘infirmity cumm out of Franche’, and where later it was known as the French Pox. Germany naturally blamed it on the French, but the Poles called it the German sickness; and in Russia … its visitations were called the Polish Disease. The ships of Vasco da Gama carried the contagion to the Far East, and as early as 1512 there were two outbreaks in Japan, where it was called Nambanniassa, the Portuguese Sickness.”⁵

The disease had marked characteristics: it was particularly virulent, running its course in a few years rather than 30 or more; it was highly contagious, and, as we have seen, reached pandemic proportions in a few years; and it was extremely painful, distressing, and unsightly in its physical manifestations. Moreover it was recognized from the beginning as being a venereal contagion.

Its symptoms and severity led people to believe that it was a new disease hitherto unknown in Europe. And not only new, but distinct. Diagnosis is the first essential step in pathology; and although diagnosis, like almost every branch of clinical medicine at this time, was rudimentary, the severity of the disease was a considerable factor in aiding diagnosis. It is therefore not surprising that, about 50 years late, Rabelais is able to distinguish it from other, and better known, diseases:

(Nous) avions les faces guastées aux lieux touchéz par lesdictz feueilletz (des Décrétales). L’un y avoit la picote, l’aultre le tac, l’aultre la vérolle, l’aultre la rougeolle, l’aultre gros furoncles. Somme, celluy de nous tous estoit le moins blessé à qui les dens estoient tombées⁶.

In another passage he (or some unknown writer) distinguishes between “… les ladres …, les empoisonnéz …, les pestiféréz …, les vérolés …, ainsi de tous aultres”⁷. In fact, however, as early as 1533 our author is differentiating between venereal infections: “… mais, le Soleil entrant en cancer et autres signes, se doibvent garder de vérolle, de chancre, de pisses chauldes, poullains grenetz etc.”⁸

The distinctiveness of this new affliction made the description and recognition of symptoms easier. The dermatological eruptions and sores noted by Morison are also described by Rabelais in various places⁹. More alarming is this picture of the afflicted, which describes them in what must be an advanced stage:

O quantes foys nous les avons veu, à l’heure que ilz estoyent bien oingtz et engresséz à point, et le visaige leur reluysoit comme la claveure d’un charnier, et les dentz leurs tressailloyent comme font les marchettes d’un clavier d’orgues ou d’espinette quand on joue dessus, et que le gosier leur escumoit comme à un verrat que les vaultres ont aculé entre les toilles¹⁰.

After diagnosis from symptoms, treatment. People are willing to spend large sums of money to seek a cure for diseases and relief from pain. Financial accounts left by wealthy burghers, as well as by traders and artisans not so wealthy, attest to this universal concern¹¹.

Although there was no known cure, it is when considering the treatments and mooted cure of this disease and of other diseases that we find the most marked differences between the new age, as we have come to regard it, and the old age. The new physicians went to school with the Greeks, and from them, particularly from Hippocrates and Galen, they learnt the value of first hand observation and of the potential of empiricism. There were of course many obstacles which prevented any true advance in clinical pathology, which would not come into its own until the nineteenth century, and the discovery by Pasteur of the bacterial aetiology of disease. And it was not until 1905 that the organism causing syphilis was identified. With the discovery of the cause comes the discovery of the cure. The men of the Renaissance did not, obviously, know the cause; but it is to their credit that through trial and error they hit upon two treatments which were not totally without effect. One was sweating in a steam bath; the other was the application of a mercury ointment. In the former treatment the patient would be enclosed in a wooden box having two compartments—the upper compartment in which the patient sat, with only his head outside; and a lower compartment in which was lit a fire. The patient was subjected to this treatment for varying periods in a heat at time intense enough to cure the patient permanently¹². The other treatment prescribed the rubbing of a mercury oxide ointment into the patient's sores. By one of those strokes of good fortune which are not rare in science, mercury came to be the principle treatment of the disease by Ehrlich following the discovery of the cause in 1905. Mercury had the effect of reducing the severity of the symptoms as well as of slowing down the progression of the disease. Rabelais was of course acquainted with both treatments. In Pantagruel we read: “… car toute sueur est salée; ce que vous direz estre vray si vous voulez taster de la vostre propre, ou bien de celles des vérolléz quand on les faict suer …”¹³ The second, in the episode of Epistemon's visit to Hades. On his return he recounts to his companions what he had seen there:

Boniface pape huytiesme estoit escumeur des marmites,
Nicolas pape tiers estoit papetier,
Le pape Alexandre estoit preneur de ratz,
Le pape Sixte, gresseur de vérolle.
—Comment? (dist Pantagruel) il y a-il des vérolléz
de par delà?
—Certes (dist Epistemon) je n’en veiz oncques tant: il en
y a plus de cent millions.
Car croyez que ceulz qui n’ont eu la vérolle en ce monde-cy
l’ont en l’aultre(14).

There are few more fascinating insights into men's thinking provided by the study of the age which lies between the dying Middle Ages and the mature Renaissance, than to observe the move away from a theological explanation and accounting of natural phenomena and toward a natural and physical explanation of them. The pandemic of morbus gallicus in question began at the end of the fifteenth century. One of the earliest treatments for the disease was provided by guaiacum. This tree was found in the islands of the New World. It was believed then that wherever God allowed a poison or a harmful plant to grow, nearby He would provided the cure¹⁵. It is of course untrue. But it was firmly believed; and since, already, the notion was circulating that Christopher Columbus's sailors had brought the disease back with them from the New World, so it was believed that the New World would provide a cure. Some merchants grew rich through the importing of Guaiacum; but no one else benefited from it in any way. At least this theory is a step in the right direction. If we go back just a little further we will find a totally different explanation of pathology—a theological explanation.

It was universally believe that God visited disease on humans as a punishment for their sins, that each disease had as it were its patron-saint, and that the sufferer would have to pray to him for his intercession with God. If the prayerful sufferer were cured, the cure was regarded as a miracle. Whenever this superstition raised its head, Rabelais did not fail to castigate it. In the midst of the Picrocholine war, five pilgrims wander on the battlefield and are taken to the king, Grandgousier, who ask them where they came from. Here is the scene:

Nous venons de Sainct Sébastian près de Nantes, et nous en retournons par noz petites journées.

—Voyre, mais (dist Grandgousier), qu’alliez-vous faire à Sainct Sébastian?

—Nous allions (dist Lasdaller) luy offrir noz votes contre la peste.

—O (dist Grandgousier) pauvres gens, estimez-vous que la peste vienne de Sainct Sébastian?

—Ouy vrayment (respondit Lasdaller), noz prescheurs nous l’afferment.

—Ouy? (dist Grandgousier) les faulx prophètes vous announcent-ilz telz abuz!

Blasphèment-ilz en ceste façon les justes et sainctz de Dieu qu’ilz les font semblables aux diables qui ne font que mal entre les humains, comme Homère escript que la peste fut mise en l’oust des Gregoys par Apollo, et comme les poètes faignent un grand tas de Vejoves et dieux malfaisans?

Ainsi preschoit à Sinays un caphart que cainct Antoine mettoit le feu ès jambes, Sainct Eutrope faisoit les hydropiques, Sainct Gildas les folz, sainct Genou les gouttes. Mais je le puniz en tel exemple, quoy qu’il me appelast hérétique, que depuis ce temps caphart quiconques n’est auzé entrer en mes terres, et m’esbahys si vostre roy les laisse prescher par son royaulme telz scandales, car plus sont à punir que ceulx qui par art magicque ou aultre engin auroient mis la peste par le pays. La peste ne tue que le corps, mais telz imposteurs empoisonnent les âmes¹⁶.

The foregoing remarks have been guided by the order: nosology and symptomatology, transmission, and treatment. We must now consider the problem of aetiology, and the controversy surrounding it. If the disease was so virulent and contagious that it seemed a new affliction, it is inevitable that there would be speculations as to its source and origin. We have just seen Rabelais's mocking dismissal of a supernatural aetiology of disease. But, as in the search for a cure, so the search for understanding turned to natural explanations. These were not lacking. Some put forward were: conjunction of the planets, foul air, or foul matter, (which is parodied by Rabelais: e.g. Pant. ch. 16), excessive heat, and floods. With time, however, one theory came to predominate. And ever since then, medical historians who have studied it have been divided. The debate continues, to this day, unresolved, between the protagonists of the Columbian theory and of the Unitarian theory. In a nutshell, they claim, either that before this outbreak it did not exist and had never been known in Europe, that it had therefore been introduced, a foreign evil from overseas; or that it had always existed, in all parts of the world, and that by some special unknown mechanisms and factors, the disease, often quiescent or latent, is stirred up from time to time in particularly powerful form¹⁷.

Does Maître Rabelais have anything to say on this question of its origin? Not much. and it is difficult to know how to take what little he does say.

On the face of it, the rumours of a New World origin of the disease, and the paradox of adventurers setting out in search of exciting new lands and of bringing back that are tailor-made to appeal to Rabelais's mind, as to one enamoured of exotica. But there are only two reference to earlier occurences of the disease; of them one only refers to origins, and that not to an American origin.

In the first chapter of Pantagruel, in which Rabelais gives a long catalogue of names of giants, in parody of the Bible, and which is presented as the genealogy of the protagonist, we read:

Athlas … engendra Goliath,
Qui engendra Eryx …
Qui engendra Tite …
Qui engendra Eryon …
Qui engendra Polyphème …
Qui engendra Cace …
Qui engendra Etion, lequel premier eut la vérolle pour n’avoir
beu frayz en esté(18).

In the first Book, we learn that it was the cause of death of the young Gargantua's sophistical tutor, Master Thubal Holoferne: “Puis luy leugt le Compost, où il fut bien seize ans et deux moys, lors que son précepteur mourut; et fut l’an mil quatre cens et vingt, de la vérolle que luy vint.”¹⁹

Rabelais lost a golden opportunity to make an important historical contribution to the serious questions attaching to what seemed a new disease. His apparent lack of curiosity or concern appears astounding. He was a humanist and classical scholar, and he expounded at length on all the great themes and burning issues of his day²⁰. Moreover, he knew the influence and “immortality” of literature. It can only be that, at the period in question, he was not writing with posterity in view²¹, and that he did not put a high value on his own writings, which were avowedly of a popular nature and purpose²².

It is otherwise with the Columbian theory. For it is due very largely to the prestige of literary form and expression that the New World origin theory was launched and sustained. I will mention two works, over 200 years apart. The first is the Latin medical poem entitled Syphilus sive Morbus Gallicus by Fracastorius, published in 1530 at Verona²³.

If Rabelais's lack of curiosity in this case is surprising, his seeming lack of concern about another area of medicine is event more so. If he had been concerned with the disease itself—if, that is, he had been writing, even in isolated passages, as a practising physician—he would, I feel sure, have said something of that branch of clinical medicine that is by far the most important of all, namely, prophylaxis. The answer to this disease in these terms is as obvious as any answer to contagion can be: DO NOT TOUCH—which, given its context, opens up a fertile field indeed for comic treatment. But the reader will search Rabelais's books and minor writings from one end to the other in vain: he will find not the least reference or allusion to such an obvious—and impossibly unrealistic—solution. On the contrary, and far from it: in another episode—this in the Tiers Livre—in a characteristic comic paradox, Rabelais takes the opposite path and proposes the carnal act itself as a remedy—for lust! Panurge, wanting to marry but fearful of being cuckolded, consults a physician, who advises him that carnal concupiscence is restrained by five means: by wine imbibed intemperately²⁴, by certain drugs and plants, by strenuous labour, by assiduous study, and by the veneral act. “Je vous attendois là (dist Panurge) et le prens pour moy. Use des praecédens qui vouldra.”²⁵

In this examinations of Rabelais's references to the disease in question—La vérole, morbus gallicus, syphilis—can a pattern be discerned, or a consistent form of treatment be noted? Can any conclusions be drawn?

Since the author was a physician, the first obvious bias to look for would be that which led to a serious “clinical” use, especially given the nature of the disease. However, of all the references (with one exception which we will discuss shortly), only one can be considered to fall under such a rubric. It is this:

Et ainsi comme vous, véroléz, de loin à vos jambes sciaticques et à vos omoplattes sentez la venue des pluyes … de tout changement de temps: ainsi à leurs racines, … elles [arbres] pressentent quelles sortes de bastons soubs elles croissent …²⁶

Even so, one significant thing to note is that the clinical characteristic of the disease does not figure for itself, but rather is used as one element of an image. Imagery, of course (like the apostrophe to the véroléz in question), is a literary device: the pathological nature of the first element is incidental.

We find, in fact, on examining the references we have cited and their contexts, that the author takes no medical “position” or stand, has no bias or axe to grind, imparts no clinical “lesson”. In a word, he is not much concerned with the disease in itself.

Nor is there any sign that his interest, as a man of learning, lies in airing his knowlege of the subject for its own sake—as he does in other areas, e.g. the physiological explanation of tears produced by excessive mirth (Gargantua, 20), and of blindness caused by excessive brightness (Gargantua, 10).

In pursuing our analysis, we are reminded of Hughes Salel's dixain addressed to the author, which praises him for the great merit of his Pantagruel, namely, its “utilité”. Does it hold true of the theme we have examined? There is, in truth, little of instruction in these passages. But from that little the lesson is big, and will in the future have momentous consequences. It is that morbus gallicus, like all diseases, whatever their origin, is a natural phenomenon, not a heaven-sent scourge to punish for blasphemy of heresy, and will respond to treatment and be cured only natural remedies and means.

This lesson is not immediately obvious—it is in fact one of the “profits” which lie “soubz plaisant fondement”. We have already seen indications, in fact, that the exploitation of the theme is incidental: it is brought in for other purposes; and other ends mean literary ends. Two among them are apostrophes to the readers, and imagery. But we can be more precise: of the references made to the disease and its victims, the great majority are exploited for the comic effect they lend themselves to—and thus are consistent with the author's literary doctrine. A glance at the citations in the Appendix will readily recall to the reader the comic element of the episodes in question. This conclusion is not only consistent with the author's stated intent:

Vray est qu’icy peu de perfection
Vous apprendez, sinon en cas de rire:

—it is also in harmony with his medico-literary philosophy.

All is grist to Rabelais's mill. In spite of the suffering the disease inflicted on people, in spite of the high fees charged by surgeons and a growing army of quacks who bled their patients financially for as long as they showed an ability to pay, it was not so serious and desperate a matter as to prohibit the comic. But not at the expense of the victims of the disease. Rabelais had studied the physician's duties towards his patients; one of these duties was the assumption of an unfailingly cheerful countenance and appearance. As he wrote in the dedicatory epistle which he addressed to Monseigneur Odet, Cardinal de Châtillon:

Hippocrates, en plusieurs lieux, mesmement on sixiesme livre des Epidémies, descrivant l’institution du médecin … l’ont composé en gestes, maintien, reguard, touchement, contenance, grâce, honesteté, netteté de face, vestements, barbe, cheveulx, mains, bouche, voire jusques à particularizer les ongles, comme s’il deust jouer le rolle de quelque amoureux ou poursuyvant en quelque insigne commoedie²⁷

His whole book is of a piece with his medical practice. In answer to critics who condemned him for filling his books with heresies, he replied that he wrote only to amuse:

Mais la calumnie de certains canibales, misantropes, agelastes, avoit tant contre moy esté atroce et desraisonnée qu’elle avoit vainc ma patience, et plus n’estois délibéré en escrire un iota. Car l’une des moindres contumélies dont ilz usoient estoit que tels livres tous estoient farciz d’hérésies diverses (n’en povoient toutesfois une seulle exhiber un endroict aulcun); de folastries joyeuses, hors l’offense de Dieu et du Roy, prou: c’est le subject et théme unicque d’iceulz livres²⁸.

But to whom was Rabelais addressing his books? Who were they meant for, if anyone in particular? Let us recall the first line of the first book, already quoted: “Beuveurs très illustres, et vous, véroléz très précieux.” This dedication has perhaps become more precise, for it seems now that Rabelais is more conscious of the sick and weak, the oppressed and the unfortunate. Every good physician knows the therapeutic value of laughter, of gaiety, of cheerfulness. This is how he explains his philosophy of comedy:

J’ay esté et suis journellement stipulé, requis et importuné pour la continuation des mythologies Pantagruelicques, alléguans que plusieurs gens languoureux, malades ou autrement faschéz et désoléz avoient, à la lecture d’icelles, trompé leurs ennuictz, temps joyeusement passé et repceu alaigresse et consolation nouvelle. Esquelz je suis coustumier de respondre que, icelles par esbat composant, ne prétendois gloire ne louange aulcune, seulement avois esguard et intention par escript donner ce peu de soulaigement que povois ès affligéz et malades absens, lequel voluntiers, quand besoing est, je fais ès présens qui soy aident de mon art et service²⁹.

Equally consistent with both his exploitation of the theme and his medicoliterary philosophy is Rabelais's attitude toward the afflicted. We have already seen that the First and Fifth books are addressed to them, albeit jocularly; as is also the Third Book. In the Prologue to the Second Book his sympathy is equally unequivocal: “Mais que diray-je des pauvres véroléz et goutteux?” he writes³⁰.

In the entire work there is only one passage where he voices an attitude in conflict with this sympathy. At the end of Gargantua he erects an ideal convent-cum-monastery—The abbey of Thélème. The entrance is adorned by a gate, above which there is engraved a long inscription in verse, which specifies who may be admitted and who are to be excluded. Among the latter class we find precisely those for whom he had previously shown, will show again, and even in the same book has shown such touching concern. But what a change in attitude!

Cy n’entrez pas, vous rassotéz mastins,
Soirs ny matins, vieux chagrins et jaloux;
Ny vous aussi, séditieux mutins,
Larves, lutins, de Dangier palatins,
Grecs ou Latins, plus à craindre que loups;
Ny vous gualous, vérolléz jusqu’à l’ous;
Portez vos loups ailleurs paistre en bonheur,
Croustelevéz, remplis de déshonneur(31).

Tone of writing is as distinctive as tone of voice. What is remarkable about this text, is firstly, the fact that Rabelais singles them out at all; secondly, that he stigmatizes them with such anger; and thirdly, that he condemns, them, not on grounds of health and hygiene, but on moral grounds (“remplis de déshonneur”). A brief comment on each will suffice: (1) That they would not find a place in Thélème is obvious from reading the qualities of those admitted, so their singling out is somewhat gratuitous, and their castigation surprising. (2) Rabelais hardly ever shows anger in his first period: it is one of the very few passages in which he does in the first two Books. It is not until the later books that his targets are truly the objects of his indignation and resentment—of a contempt fully earned. (3) The only occasions on which Rabelais condemns on moral grounds is when he castigates those in positions of authority and able to harm the fabric of society or to poison men's minds.

I do not doubt that these lines were written by Rabelais. But I tend to think the inscription—and perhaps much of Thélème, particularly the courtly and “social” chapters, 55-57—was suggested (commissioned even?) by another—perhaps by Marguerite de Navarre. The anti-monastic theme of Thélème is Rabelaisian; but the manner in which it is treated and elaborated seems incompatible with the spirit of the good doctor³².

In view of the unusual, and unique, feature of this text, it is particularly significant that the condemnation in Télème is subsequently repudiated by Rabelais—indeed, in his very first writing following the end of Gargantua, i.e. in the Prologue to the Tiers Livre (OC, 328):

De ce poinct expédié, à mon tonneau je retourne. Sus à ce vin, compaings! Enfans, beuvez à pleins guodetz! … Notez bien ce que j’ay dict, et quelle manière de gens je invite … Des cerveaulx à bourlet, grabeleurs de corrections, ne me parlez … Des caphars encores moins, quoy que tous soient beuveurs oultréz tous verolléz croustelevéz, guarniz de altération inextinguible et manducation insatiable.

(My italics)

Rabelais had a long memory. The repudiation, which he waited 12 years to make, must have been important to him. At the very least, it restores the constancy of his expressed compassion for suffering and the sufferers.

It is one of the marks of greatness of Rabelais that he sides with the underdog—that he manifests such sympathy for the poor and the weak, the sick and the suffering, the oppressed and downtrodden and dispirited—and that he lambastes the powerful. He knew that the individual can do little real and lasting harm except to himself; that widespread and prolonged damage can be done to society only by those occupying positions of power and authority. That Rabelais was received at Court, that he hobnobbed all his adult life with the rulers of Church and State and Army and consorted with leaders of the liberal professions, makes it, and him, all the more remarkable. This striking feature of Rabelais the man and his creation has interesting, and broader, exegetical consequences and ramifications.

Notes

1. Gargantua, Prologue, line 1. (Œuvres Complètes, Paris, Gallimard, “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade”, 1955) p. 3.

2. Cinquiesme Livre, Prologue, 1 (OC, 749).

3. “A literary work”. This is obviously a 20th century judgement, of one of the western world's greatest creative masterpieces. It was otherwise for Rabelais's contemporaries who saw in Pantagruel and Gargantua two comic farces meant to appeal to the popular taste. Which was the humanist's way of spreading his “gospel”. This explains why 18 of the 27 specific references to the disease in question occur in the popular works of 1532-1535. There are 7 mentions in the Cinquième Livre, 2 in the Tiers Livre ans 1 in the Quart Livre. (see also Note 20 in this respect).

4. The figure given are obtained from the author's Concordance to Rabelais, prepared at the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre, University of Cambridge. The contexts are given in an appendix.

5. Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, (Boston, 1942), ch. XXXVII, pp. 193-194. It should perhaps be observed, in the interest of historical accuracy, that this one detail Morison is mistaken. We would not wish to deny the privilege of priority to Scotland, whose people first gave a foothold to the disease in the British Isles—no doubt because their relations with France, as allies, were closer than those between France and England—before sharing it which their Sassenach tormentors south of the border. The arrival of the disease in Scotland and its spread to England and Ireland are well documented. R.S. Morton, in his article, “Some Aspects of the Early History of Syphilis in Scotland”, is categorical. He attributes it to Perkin Warbeck and his followers, who arrived at Aberdeen in August 1495. Warbeck (who pretended to be the Duke of York—one of the two children suffocated in the Tower during the brief reign of Richard III—and hence heir to the throne of England) was “undoubtedly a pawn of James IV of Scotland”, who held “a great display of arms—‘a wapping schawing’—at Stirling in honour of Warbeck” (Brit. J. Vener. Dis., 38, (1962), 175). No doubt it is easier to bestow this “gift” on a friend than on an enemy, though enmity is no bar. Maupassant made of this human proclivity a telling theme in his powerful and ironic story of heroism in war, “Le lit 29”, in Mile Fifi (Paris, 1893).

   The reader will be interested to read the account of a contemporary observer, that of Guicciardini: “After our account of other matters, it does not seem unworthy to report that at this period—when it was Italy's fate that all of her ills should originate with the French invasion or should at least be attributed to them—the disease which the French called ‘the Neapolitain sickness’ and the Italians commonly called buboes or ‘French sickness’, made its first appearance.

   The French caught this disease in Naples, and they spread it all over Italy on their way home to France. It was either quite new or until this time entirely unknown in our hemisphere except in its most remote parts and was for many years so horrible that it deserves to be mentioned as a grave disaster. It showed itself either in hideous boils which often became incurable sores, or with intense pains in the joints and nerves all over the body. The doctors know nothing about the disease, did not employ suitable remedies but quite often wrong ones which made the symptoms much worse. Many people of every age and sex died from it, and many others were hideously deformed and became helpless and subject to almost continual agonies of pain. Indeed most of those who appeared to have recovered in a short time fell again into the same misery. However, after many years the influence of the stars which made the disease so virulent was mitigated or the appropriate cures for it became known through long experience, and it became much less malignant.

   It had of its own accord also produced several types different from the first form of the disease. This was a calamity of which the men of our age might the more reasonably complain if it had fallen upon them without any fault of their own: for it is agreed by all those who closely observed the characteristics of the disease, that it never, or hardly ever, occurs save by contagion in coitus. Yet one should rightly remove this smirch from the French name, because it was later seen that the disease had been brought in from those islands which, as we shall narrate at some more appropriate moment, began to be known to our hemisphere during those years through the voyages of a Genoese, Christopher Columbus. In those islands, however, this malady finds a prompt remedy through the benevolence of nature; for they cure it easily, simply by drinking the juice of a tree distinguished for its many remarkable properties”, Guicciardini, History of Italy, ed. and abridged by John R. Hale (New York, Twayne publishers, “The Great Histories”, 1964), pp. 278-279.

   It is important to note two things: first, that Guicciardini had no way of knowing that the juice of this “remarkable” tree (guaiacum) effected a cure—a supposed cure which proved false; and second that, on the other hand, when he was recording events which took place in his own country and in his own time, he was a scrupulous inquirer and researcher whose investigations deserve the greatest respect and confidence.

6. Quart Livre, 52, 129 (OC, 682).

7. Cinquiesme Livre, 19, 69 (OC, 802).

8. Pantagrueline Prognostication, V. (OC, 902).

9. See, for example, Pant. 15, 56 (OC, 233); Tiers Livre, Prol., 251 (OC, 328).

10. Pantagruel, Prologue, 36-42 (OC, 168).

11. See Wickersheimer for source: reference quoted note 19. Also, cp. Rabelais: “après avoir tous leurs biens despenduz en médicins sans en rien profiter” (Pantagruel, Prologue).

12. See, for example, Antonioli, Rabelais et la médecine, “Etudes rabelaisiennes”, t. XII (Genève, Librairie Droz, 1976), 95-96.

13. Pantagruel, 2, 55-58 (OC, 179).

14. Pantagruel, 30, 134-142 (OC, 299).

15. Myths die hard. Even to-day, one hears it said occasionally, that if one is stung by stinging-nettles one needs only to look around and he will find some dock-leaves; for Nature always provides nearby a remedy to the ills she causes. Between the early 16th century and the early 20th century we progressed from a theological to a natural explanation of a superstition. God has merely been replaced by Nature; but everything else remains the same. In this regard, see also the passage from Guicciardini reproduced at n. 4.

16. Gargantua, 45, 34-61 (OC, 131).

17. In order to understand the historical topicality of Rabelais's references to the disease it may help to outline what is known and documented of the outbreak itself; secondly, sketch the outline of the Columbian theory; thirdly, compare them; and finally, glance at some of the literary and other written sources dealing with the epidemic and the theory of its origin. We have seen that it was the peculiar virulence, contagiousness and severity of the disease which, making a powerful impression on people's minds, disposed them to consider it a new form of affliction, and hence to cast around for a new explanation. We have also seen that, since its outbreak coincided with the French invasion of Italy and investment of Naples, there might be a direct cause-and-effect relation. We have quoted Guicciardini and Morison, who related that the sailors of Christopher Columbus, returned to Spain from the Second Voyage to the New World, were strong candidates for the distinction of having introduced it into Europe.

    According to Karl Sudhoff, one of the most renowned medical historians of this century, this theory is not supported by contemporary records. The most painstaking researches carried out in the archives of Naples, produced no evidence of either an epidemic or a new disease. [Karl Sudhoff, “The Origin of Syphilis” in Essays in the History of Medicine, (New York, Medical Life Press, 1926), pp. 263-265.]

    All the reliable evidence points to the fact that there was an outbreak of syphilis in Italy, between 1494 and 1496, and that it followed the line of the French army's march—Naples, Capua, Rome, Siena, Florence, Milan, Turin. Also, over a dozen incunabula have been unearthed, most of them by physicians, who describe it as a new disease. It is conceivable that, if it had existed in Europe before this time, in its ordinary forms, diagnosis may have failed—all the more since syphilis shows symptoms characteristic of other diseases. In fact, Sir William Osler, the great Canadian medical teacher and writer, described it as “the Great Imitator”. (See n. 22.)

    What of the Columbian theory? There is adequate evidence to show that the Spanish sailors did meet native girls and women on the islands visited and explored. The girls are described by more than one source as being “young and beautiful, everywhere naked, in most places accessible, and presumably complaisant”. Another says that they wore nothing, that “they have very pretty bodies, and were the first to come and give thanks to Heaven and to bring what they had”.

    See Las Casas, Columbus, and Guacanagari, quoted or referred to by Morison, op. cit. p. 206. I have also relied on The Journal of Christopher Columbus, ed. L.A. Vigneras (London, Anthony Blond, 1968) and The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, ed. and tr. by J.M. Cohen (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1969).

    We may note that the physical appearance of the girls of Hispaniola belies the likelihood of infection—and in fact there are no reports from any source of diseased women. (Compare the description given by Morison, p. 2, and Rabelais, p. 3, supra). Next, Christopher Columbus in his accounts of his voyage gives no indication that his sailors were in anything but good health throughout the crucial 51-day period of the return (See Cohen, op. cit., p. 209). The first lesions appeared after two to six weeks following contact, and generally after three or four weeks. It is incidentally interesting to see the cause attributed to the death of Martin Alonso Pinzon, the rebellious captain of the Pinta on the first voyage. Vigneras, op. cit., n. 151, writes: “Martin Alonso died about three weeks later, possibly of syphilis contracted in the Indies.” And Cohen, who subscribed to the Columbian theory, says that Pinzon “died of grief”. Or again, the earliest record of any outbreak of syphilis in Cadiz or Seville is not in 1496, but rather not until 1497. Then it is found in prostitutes and considered to be a new disease, which was named las bubas.

    One might ask, finally, if it was thought that Columbus's sailors were infected on the Second Voyage, how is it to be explained that they did not import the contagion on return from the First Voyage?

    However, it seems to me that the most telling argument is provided by the chronology. Christopher Columbus reached Palos, on return from his first voyage, on March 15, 1493; and Cadiz, on return from the second, on June 11, 1496. Charles VIII and his army entered Italy in Septembre, 1494, and occupied Naples from February 22 to May 20, 1495.

    One of the earliest writers on the disease, Caspare Torella, the Papal Court's Spanish physician, who dedicated his Tractatus contra Pudendagram seu Morbum Gallicum to Caesar Borgia (one of his patients!), wrote that the pestilence began in 1493, in France. [See Morison, op. cit., p. 198.] And Sudhoff has collected and published a deal of evidence (“selected to prove his point”, according to Morison) to show that it existed in Europe long before. [Karl Sudhoff, The Earliest Printed Literature on Syphilis, published in the series “Monumenta Medica”, vol. III, ed. H.E. Sigerist.] Since Sudhoff, much has been written on both sides. R.R. Wilcox has written on venereal disease in the Bible, and T.F. Carney has attributed to it the death of Sulla, the Roman general, in 78 B.C. [See, respectively, R.R. Wilcox, “Venereal disease in the Bible” in Brit. Journ. Ven. Dis. 25 (1949), 28-33; T.F. Carney, “The Death of Sulla” in Acta Classica IV (1961), 64-79.]

18. Pantagruel, 1, 101-111 (OC, 174-175).

19. Gargantua, 14, 21 (OC, 48).

20. We find, on the other hand, a curious echo in the Pantagrueline Prognostication of 1533, already cited, (see n. 7 above). Rabelais gives a list of “gens soubzmiz à (Vénus), comme putains, maquerelles, marjolets, bougrins, bragars, napleux, eschancréz, ribleurs, rufiens, caignardiers … ” (Ch. 5, line 63-64, OC, 902). The term “napleux” is a hapax legomenon in Rabelais. It is given by Edmond Huguet in his Dictionnaire de la langue française du XVI^e siècle, who defines it. He quotes four illustrations of the use of the word, among them the one in Rabelais and this one, from a sottie of the turn of the century:

    Reigneurs dissolutz, appostates,
    Yvrongnes, napleux, a grant hastes,
    Venez.

    It would seem that the word, as used here and by Rabelais, is a perfectly neutral term which carries no taint of opprobrium. Quite otherwise is a cognate term which we find in an article by Wickersheimer. In his researches in the issues attaching to syphilis at this period, Wickersheimer unearthed a number of “inventaires sommaires” in departmental, municipal, and hospital archives. I will quote two of them, both from the Archives de l’Aube:

    “23. Troyes (Officialité épiscopale), 1507 ou 1508. Guillaume Pierrote ayant appelé “naplier” le clerc Jean Genvret, celui-ci riposta en l’appelant “coupault”, c’est-à-dire cocu, mais “naplier” est, paraît-il, une injure plus atroce que “coupault”. Pierrote nie d’ailleurs avoir prononcé le mot “naplier”, bien que Genvret lui ait autre fois avoué avoir eu le mal de Naples.

    “28. Ibid. 1516 ou 1517.

    Noël Marin, clerc, est accusé d’avoir battu Etienne Lerlin, potier d’étain, de l’avoir appelé ‘Villain napplier, paillard infâme’ et d’avoir dit ‘qu’il estoit napplier, luy et ses frères, et qu’il gastoit touttes les femmes et les chamberières partout où il alloit’”, (Ernest Wickersheimer, “Sur la syphilis aux XV^e et XVI^e siècles”, in Humanisme et Renaissance, IV (1937), 185, 187).

    The word naplier is found in neither Rabelais nor Huguet.

21. “… not writing with posterity in view”: This would be an almost certain recipe for literary failure. It is, paradoxically, one of the soundest axioms of literary, or artistic, criticism that no writer endures who does speak to his contemporaries.

22. Of the 16 specific mentions of morbus gallicus quoted in this article, 11 are from the early works of the period 1532-1534. These are the popular novels written to appeal to the gallery. The Tiers Livre (1546) and Quart Livre (1552)-one quotation each-are more serious and mature works, and their humour appreciably less somatic and more cerebral.

23. A mixture of mythology, astrology, theological superstition, and genuine medical knowledge, it tells the story of an adventurer (possibly modeled on Columbus) who sails westward from Spain, past Antillia, Haiti and Guiana to Ophir. The sailors landing there shoot some beautiful birds, and incur the wrath of the Sun-God. One of the birds prophesied dire ills:

    Nor end your sufferings here; a strange disease
    And most obscene, shall on your bodies seize.

    Before the visitors' departure, the natives hold their great festival to the Sun-God, all now stricken with the same obscene disease. But the high priest displays some boughs of the magical guaiacum and purges the tainted ground with them. This, he informs the Spanish commander, is the disease predicted by the holy bird; and the tells the story of the origin of the affliction and the discovery of the cure:

    A shepherd once (distrust no ancient fame)
    Possess’d these downs, and Syphilus his name.

    This shepherd kept his king's flocks, and one summer the heat and drought being intense the cattle died. Syphilus blasphemed against the Sun-God, and not only transferred his worship to his king, but won over the people to his way. The Sun-God in his vindictive anger sent forth a dire infection on earth which contaminated air, water and land. Syphilus became its first victim.

    He first wore buboes dreadful to the sight,
    First felt strange pains and sleepless pass’d the night;
    From him the malady received its name.

    The subject of the poem is summed up in these lines:

    Say, Goddess, to what cause we shall at last
    Assign this plague, unknown to ages past;
    If from western climes ’twas wafted o’er,
    When daring Spaniard left their native shore;
    Resolv’d beyond th’Atlantick to descry
    Conjectured worlds, or in the search to dye.

    [For these excerpts I am indebted to the essay on Fracastorius by Sir William Osler in An Alabama Student and Other Biographical Essays (New York, Oxford University Press, 1909). See pp. 289-293 in particular.]

    Two hundred and twenty-nine years later the story of the origin is still very much alive. Voltaire has Dr. Pangloss contract this disease from Cunégonde's mother's maid, and is in a piteous state when he meets up with Candide some time later. The innocent Candide asks Pangloss how he came to be in a such condition, and Pangloss explains:

    O mon cher Candide! vous avez connu Paquette, cette jolie suivante de notre auguste baronne; j’ai goûté dans ses bras les délices du paradis, qui ont produit ces tourments d’enfer dont vous me voyez dévoré; elle en était infectée, elle en est peut-être morte. Paquette tenait ce présent d’un cordelier très savant qui avait remonté à la source, car il l’avait eu d’une vieille comtesse, qui l’avait reçu d’un capitaine de cavalerie, qui le devait à une marquise, qui le tenait d’un page, qui l’avait eu en droite ligne d’un des compagnons de Christophe Colomb.

    [Voltaire, “Candide”, in Contes philosophiques (Paris, Garnier Frères, 1949), pp. 44-45.] How different is the mocking, scornful spirit of the mischievous Voltaire—“Un page … l’avait reçu d’un jésuite”(!)—from the healthy, magnanimous gaiety of Rabelais's rumbustious laughter.

24. This remedy is corroborated by the Porter in Macbeth who, being asked by MacDuff what three things drink particularly provokes, answers: “Lechery sir, it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance” Macbeth, II, iii, 29-30.

25. Tiers Livre, ch. 31 (OC, 440-443).

26. Cinquiesme Livre, 9 (OC, 773).

27. Tiers Livre, A Mgr. Odet, Cardinal de Chastillon, 16-25 (OC, 517-518).

28. Ibid., 96-104 (OC, 520).

29. Ibid., 2-14 (OC, 517). For a fuller discussion see Antonioli, op. cit., 278-281.

30. Pantagruel, Prologue, 36 (OC, 168).

31. Gargantua, 54, 43-50 (OC, 153).

32. Anti-monasticism is also a feature of Marguerite's writings—and particularly of her Heptaméron. The same may be said of the other three dominant themes of Thélème: feminism, liberty, conformity; and more especially of the dominant rûole of women in this ultra-refined society. However, the key to my contention is the moralising tone of this poem: Marguerite is a moralising writer; Rabelais is not, he is a moral writer.