The influence of Rabelais on medicine and its reform

François Rabelais (1494?-1553?) was, at one time or another in his life, a monk, physician, and writer. He lived in an era of controversy and conflict. An acknowledged scholar and classicist of the first order, he inveighed not only against church and government abuses at a time when it was dangerous to do so, but also against abuses in the domain of medicine. In addition to possessing great erudition. Rabelais was a master of coarse and common language, a fact evident throughout his five satirical books, which caused many to think of him as risqué. Rabelais's popular reputation as a gross buffoon of the later Middle Ages contrasts strikingly with his real status as one of the most profound and daring thinkers of his time: a great, creative mind. His sharp literary attacks were intended as instruments of reform. In Rabelais's time, medicine was not the scientific and therapeutically-effective profession that it is today. It was then devoid of science and full of absurdities, and the medications prescribed were often childishly inadequate. That Rabelais stuck to medicine an used it to color all of his writings reflects his strong natural inclination for that field. Rabelais the humanist is, perhaps, the most interesting physician of all time.