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.”