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. These rather vague and imperfect physiological explanations are open to discussion, but we all are aware that an excess of work, of intellectual labor applied to science, letters, or arts, is recognized to-day as a cause for weakening of venereal desires and the forerunner of impotency. Again says Rondibilis: “As to the venereal act, again: I am of the opinion that the desire is subdued by the methods resorted to by the Hermits of Thebaide, who macerate their bodies so as to quell sensuality; this they do twenty-five or thirty times a day, to reduce the rebellion of the flesh.” This is to say that a certain cause of impotence consists in an excess of genital apparatus, no matter of what variety; and we will add what the physician of Montpellier has not mentioned, that this maceration, which was nothing else than masturbation, superinduced spermatorrhœa, the morbid effects of which, on the human economy, are well known. It is unnecessary to follow our Master Rondibilis in all his dissertations regarding the anatomical and moral imperfections of women, which he attributes to the misleading of Nature’s ordinary good sense, which he thinks “molded women more for the delectation of man and the perpetuity of the species rather than to secure perfection in the individual.” One thing is certain, that is, that he speaks with much physiological spirit, and that the amiable Panurge is so enchanted with the learned talk of Doctor Rondibilis that he does not forget to pay him a consultation fee, for, says the veracious chronicles, “Approaching him he put in his hand, without saying a word, four _nobles a la rose_, the which Rondibilis accepted gracefully.” These coins were made of fine gold, and struck off in 1334 by Edward III., of England. They had on one side the figure of a ship, and on the other a rose, arms of the Houses of York and Lancaster. This consultation was royally paid for in money of the Realm.