“Imprimis, by wine; for intemperance in wine makes the blood cold, slackens up the cords, dissolves the nerves, dissipates the generative seed, stupefies the senses, perverts muscular movement; which weaknesses are all impediments to the act of generation. Hence it is that Bacchus, God of tipplers, bousers, and drunkards, is always painted beardless and dressed in a woman’s habit, like unto a thing effeminate or a eunuch. You know full well the antique proverb, i.e., that Venus is chilled without the society of Ceres and Bacchus.”
These reflections on the general effects of alcohol on the nervous system are very just. As to its particular effects on the function of generation, it is admitted by all hygienists that alcohol taken occasionally in excess excites venereal desires, but when taken habitually it weakens the generative functions. Amyot remarks that “those who drink much wine are slothful in performing the generative act, and their seed are good for nothing, as a rule.”
Rondibilis told Panurge the truth. Let us now see what other advice he gave his patient, and also note the methods by which he proposed to secure the best possible completion of the conjugal act.
“Secondly, the fervency of lust is abated by means of certain drugs and plants, which make the taker cold-blooded towards women; in other words, unfit him for the act of copulation. Such are the water lily, agnus castor, willow twigs, hemp stalks, tamarisk, mandrake, gnat flower, hemlock, and others; the which entering the human body by their elementary virtues and specific properties freeze and destroy the prolific germinal fluid, and obstruct the generative spirit instead of leading it to those passages and conduits designed for its reception by Nature, and, by preventing expulsion, prevent man from undertaking the feat of amorous dalliance.”
We will not enter into a discussion of the anaphrodisiac value of the plants mentioned by Rondibilis. We still recognize the soothing properties of Agnus Castus and vitex, or monk’s powder, as it is sometimes called; also that of belladonna, hemlock, digitalis, lupulin, camphor, and hempseed; as for tamarack and willow bark, their virtues are at least doubtful.
But from this passage from Rabelais we must conclude that the therapeutic uses of plants was already well known in the sixteenth century.
Again says Doctor Rondibilis: “Passion or lechery is subdued by hard labor and continual toiling, which makes such a dissolution in the whole body that the blood has neither time nor leisure to spare for seminal resudations or superfluity of the third concoction. Nature particularly reserves itself, deeming it much more necessary to conserve the individual rather than to multiply the human species. Thus the chaste Diana hunted incessantly. Thus the tired and overworked are said to be ‘castrated.’ We continually see semi-impotency among athletes. In this manner wrote Hippocrates in his great work, ‘Liber de Aere, Aqua, et Locis’: ‘There is in Scythia a tribe which has been more impotent than eunuchs to venereal desires, because these people live continually on horseback and hard work. To the contrary, idleness, the mother of luxury, begets sexual passion.’”
There is no necessity for long commentaries to demonstrate that manual labor and active physical exercise lessen the natural tendency to erotic ideas. The workingman and peasant are, as all the world knows, less given to the passion of love than the idle and luxurious of the cities. And the reasons given above by the Middle Age physicians are to-day admitted by all physiological writers.
But let us continue the advice of Rondibilis:
“Fervent study diminishes the erotic tendency, for under such conditions there is an incredible resolution of the spirits, so that they never rest from carrying on a generative resolution. When we contemplate the form of a man attentive to his studies we shall see all the arteries of the brain tied down as though with a cord, in order to furnish him spirits sufficient to keep filled the ventricles of common sense, imagination, apprehension, memory, co-ordination,” etc.