Castuy carrible, et res ne donne.”
Let us pass from a wild Flemish harangue, that possesses but little interest even to those understanding the dialects.
The psychic symptoms, which dominate in the simulated delirium of Master Pathelin, are especially incoherent in language with mobility of ideas. The author of this fine comedy had evidently observed the progressive instability of thought among certain maniacs, the impossibility of fixing their attention, the too rapid succession of ideas without order; in fact, that absolute incoördination, a kind of cerebral automatism, which is the announcement of the breaking-down of intellectual faculties and the prelude of absolute dementia. In his ravings, Pathelin descants on the Mal de Saint Garbot, or, more properly speaking, Garbold; this was dysentery, although such a scholar as Genin translates it as meaning hemorrhoids. Saint Garbold who was Bishop of Bayeux in the seventh century, was driven out from his episcopal chair by his diocesans, and, in order to be avenged, sent them dysentery.
We may remark, in this connection, that during the Middle Ages many maladies were called after the Saints, whose aid they invoked in given diseases; Saint Ladre or Lazare, for leprosy; Saint Roch, for the plague; Saint Quentin, for dropsy; Saint Leu, Saint Loupt, Saint Mathelin, Saint Jehan, Saint Nazaire, Saint Victor, for epilepsy, fever, deafness, madness, etc.
The mal Saint Andreux, mal Saint Antoine, mal Saint Firmin, mal Saint Genevieve, mal Saint Germain, mal Saint Messaut, mal Saint Verain, designated erysipelas, scurvy, etc. Drunkenness was called the mal Saint Martin.
Syphilis naturally had its patron Saint; in fact, it was known as mal Saint homme Job, Saint Merais, Saint Laurant, mal Saint Eupheme, etc. In fact, all diseases had as an attachment the name of one or more Saints, at whose shrine the afflicted might implore aid.
But to return to Master Pathelin: After numerous tirades he finishes by acknowledging his deceit to the draper. This is an epitome of the farce of Master Pierre Pathelin, a medical study that had an immense run in the fifteenth century and remains a valuable document regarding French morality in the Middle Ages, as interesting to the student of psychology as to the Theatre. Some years after this (1490) the sequel to Master Pathelin appeared, called the “Last Will of Pathelin,” which is also full of strange medical conceits appertaining to the age in which it was written. In this piece, Pathelin, after years of fraud and deceit, really becomes ill and sends for the lawyer and priest, abandoning the doctor to a certain extent. In his will he leaves all his ailments to different religious orders and charitable institutions, as, for instance, one item of his will reads as follows:
“Au quatre convens aussi,
Cordeliers, Carmes, Augustins,
Jacobins, soient ors, on Soient ens,