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(Regarding syphilis prophylaxis... ) "Personal purity
is the prophylaxis which we, as physicians, are especially bound to advocate.
Continence may be a hard condition (to some harder than to others), but it can
be borne, and it is our duty to urge this lesson upon young and old who seek
our advice in matters sexual. Certainly it is better, as St. Paul says, to marry
than to burn, but if the former is not feasible there are other altars than
those of Venus upon which a young man may light fires. He may practise at least
two of the five means by which, as the physician Rondibilis counselled Panurge,
carnal concupiscence may be cooled and quelled --- hard work of body and hard
work of mind. Idleness is the mother of lechery; and a young man will find that
absorption in any pursuit will do much to cool passions which, though natural
and proper, cannot in the exigencies of our civilization always obtain natural
and proper gratification."
Notes:
- In Rabelais's history of Gargantua and Pantagruel, the physician, Rondibilis,
advises a Parisian libertine, Panurge, "on preventives in the interest of
continence." Although Osler does not cite Rabelais or use quotation marks,
Rondibilis's advice to Panurge in Osler's section on syphilis prophylaxis
in Principles and Practice is directly from Rabelais, according to
Tigertt. Tigertt goes on to say, "In a 1918 book by W.F. Smith, highly praised
by Osler, these recommendations are attributed to Aristotle, Tiraqueau, Hippocrates,
Cicero, Plutarch, and Lucian. (The other three recommendations are 'excess
in drinking [from Plutarch], the use of certain herbs [from Pliny]… and unstinted
indulgence.')" (Tigertt, W.D. Annotated answers to the 1902 examination on
Osler's Principles and Practice of Medicine. Annals of Internal Medicine 79:460-472,
1973.)
http://www.blackmask.com/olbooks/rabelaisdex.htm?http://www.blackmask.com/olbooks/rabelaiscon.htm
http://www.larryelectric.com/books/Gargantua_and_Pantagruel/Chapter_3.XXXI.shtml
In his 1918 review of W.F. Smith's book in Lancet, Osler said, in part: "There
are graduates or licentiates in medicine --- Goldsmith, Smollett, and Keats,
for example --- who reached a first rank in literature, but were doctors only
in name. Rabelais heads the list in the class to which Sir Thomas Browne,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Brown, and others belong, who were actively engaged
in professional work. By profession a monk, by practice a physician, he was
in turn a teacher, a hospital physician, a medical editor, and a city physician.
His immortal 'books' were written to beguile the tedium of his patients, and
to help them the better to bear their sufferings in his absence. No one has
ever dwelt with stronger emphasis on the personal factor in the success of
the physician, and he cites the great Greek doctors to show that the physician's
duty is in every way, even to the smallest particular, to consult the well-being
of his patients, to whom may be communicated his cheerful bearing or the reverse.
We trust this admirable study of the great Chinonais may awaken a renewed
interest among us in the writings of a man who has instructed, puzzled, and
amused the world, and who has helped 'to pass on the torch of learning and
literature to many leading spirits of other ages and countries.'" (Osler,
W. Rabelais in His Writings (book review). Lancet 1:644-645, 1918.)
- http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/corinthians/theclabackground.stm
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/jerome-marriage.html
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/haught_17_4.html