Medicine in the Middle Ages: Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. MinorDupouy, Edmond
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Medicine in the Middle Ages: Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. Minor
Dupouy, Edmond
Medicine, Medieval
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:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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