Taking the Piss out of Pantagruel: Urine and Micturition in Rabelais

Taking the Piss out of Pantagruel: Urine and Micturition in Rabelais
Author(s): Jeff Persels
Source: Yale French Studies, No. 110, Meaning and Its Objects: Material Culture in Medieval
and Renaissance France (2006), pp. 137-151
Published by: Yale University Press
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JEFFPERSELS
Taking the Piss out of Pantagruel:
in Rabelais
Urine and Micturition
ibn Sinam]
that, as Avicenna
says,
[Abu Ali al-Husain
created
the intestines
for receiving
the solid
is the fecal matter
from the first digestion.
Said matter
so that we need not be perpetually
for a time in the intestines
It is to be noted
God
omnipotent
that
superfluity
is held
on the stool.
He
also
created
from
watery
superfluity
and preserved
for a time
every hour,
to life.1
So fourteenth-century
cated, like Fran?ois
for this would
surgeon
like Rabelais?"glosses,"
tion of the intestines
the bladder
for receiving
and holding
the
is held
said superfluity
digestion;
so that we need not urinate
in the bladder
the second
keep man
from
the worldly
affairs
necessary
Guy de Chauliac?Montpellier-edu
and erstwhile
Lyons practitioner,
Rabelais,
in ideologically
and the bladder. His
orthodox
also
the func
fashion,
first
Inventarium,
was
in
in
the
in
1490s,
printed
Italy
readily available
complete
and/or
translation
as the
the sixteenth
abridged French
throughout
century
sources
and was one of the primary
for Rabelais's
medical
Guidon,
from anatomical
to therapeutic
Moving
knowledge.2
pre
description
seminal
in the later chapters and drawing on the then-standard
"com
that is, the etiology
of disease as an upset in the nat
plexion
theory,"
ural balance
of humors,
continues:
"It is to be noted
Chauliac
that
. . which
.
evacuation
is an operation
rids the body of the entire quan
it from the nature of the blood"
tity of the bad humor and separates
(as
to
opposed
Evacuation,
phlebotomy).
scription
as Hippocrates
says
...
is double.
The
one
is natural
and
is accom
plished by the ruling virtue of the body functioning of its own accord ...,
and of this we do not intend to speak here. The other is artificial and is
1. Guy de Chauliac,
en fran?oys
Le guidon
(Paris,
See Roland Antonioli,
et la m?decine
Rabelais
2.
YFS
Andrea
110, Meaning
Tarnowski,
and
?
Its Objects,
ed. Margaret
by Yale University.
Burland,
1537),
66r.
(Geneva:
David
Droz,
1976),
LaGuardia,
56-60.
and
2006
137
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138
Yale French
Studies
accomplished
by virtue of the body accepting the help of medicine
is administered
which
by the physician, and of this we do intend to
speak here. (66r)3
I have
to be the symbolic
I consider
what
and
of the intestines,
the "solid superfluity"
of success)
and their "artificial"
degrees
therein,
as
a
roi thaumaturge
and
by Pantagruel
latter-day
discussed
emblematic
elsewhere
role in Rabelais
held
(with varying
evacuation
effected
like to sketch out a complementary
is
second,
reading
and, following
"liquid,"
superfluity
Chauliac's
rather than its natural evacuation,
with at
lead, its artificial
tention to the uses early modern
society, unlike our own prof
European
Christus
Iwould
Here
medicus.4
of
the
that
Not only did the divinely-con
ligate age, found for this "superfluity."
our early modern
ancestors
to
retentive
ceived bladder's
allow
powers
at
to
the "worldly affairs necessary
life" with
fewer interruptions,
keep
a
its contents
in
role
the
of those
conduct
arguably played
productive
affairs and in the healthy
ancestors' more
maintenance
modern
intimate
our early
of that life. How might
un
with
and particular
relationship
of works
of their urine affect their reception
derstanding
scenes
or
feature
urination
which
of
belais's,
micturition,
and artificially
induced?
rally executed
more or differently
to them than it does
In other words,
to us?
as Ra
such
natu
both
did piss mean
POUR VEOIR DE LEUR URINE
The
sixteenth-century
to spark interest
and idiomatic
in
of popular phrases
expressions
or
urine
French involving
should
be
sufficient
piss
and alert us to a potentially
sociohistori
significant
cal and
cultural
difference.
urine],"
for example?translated
simple
early
what
ubiquity
seventeenth-century
stuff e they be made
all but universal
diagnostic
For recent general
see
tice,
Nancy
especially
to Knowledge
troduction
3.
Press,
1800
1990);
Lawrence
"Pour
and
de
leur urine
[to see
their
if somewhat
colorlessly
by
as: "to see
Cotgrave
and
directly on the principal
act of the medieval
uroscopy,
practitioner,
helpfully
lexicographer
of "?is modeled
of medieval
surveys
G. Siraisi, Medieval
I. Conrad
veoir
Practice
et al,
R?ndle
and early modern
medical
theory
?) Early Renaissance
Medicine:
and London:
University
(Chicago
The Western
Medical
Tradition
and prac
An In
of Chicago
800 BC to AD
UK: Cambridge
Medi
Press,
Rawcliffe,
University
1995); and Carole
(Cambridge,
in Later Medieval
and Society
1995).
England
(Stroud, UK: A Sutton,
in the bowels'
the Rabelaisian
4. Jeffery C. Persels,
"'Straitened
or, Concerning
31 (1996): 101-112.
Etudes
Rabelaisiennes
Trope of Defecation,"
cine
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JEFF PERSELS
of a patient's
is, the examination
humors
of
the
balance
his/her
mining
a
illness.5 Whether
university-trained
139
urine
of deter
for the purposes
the nature of his/her
such as Laurent
Jou
physician
that
and thus
aMontpellier
(like Chauliac,
man) whose De urinis was first pub
in 15 71, or a humble
surgeon such as Ambroise
Par?,
apprenticed
in
first appeared
basic
knowl
whose
collected works
1574,
(in French)
a professional
sine qua
of uroscopy was considered
edge and practice
bert
lished
non. And
if I single out both Joubert and Par? from among countless
to the likelihood
it
is
that they would
have been
due as much
others,
as
careers
to
their
Rabelais
readers
of
that
yet led
appreciative
divergent
to the health of the last
each to end up as a royally-appointed
attendant
and thus to "real life" experience
in fiction.
depicted
Valois
of royal urine
and micturition,
as Rabelais
much
as distinct
of uri
practice
of the actual
purposes
study for diagnostic
nalysis
the optical, olfactory,
chemical
breakdown
of urine), entailed
and gus
a
or
of
tatory inspection
sample, presented
directly
(quite often) indi
put, uroscopy,
(which involves
Simply
from
the modern
into a specially-devised,
and decanted
rectly to the practitioner
glass
French urinal, English
flask (Latin matula,
after
the
Jordan,
river). The
was
to
imitate
the
urine's
Jordan
traditionally
bladder-shaped
closely
to facilitate
with established
charts and
comparison
receptacle
of color and strata variations
used to diagnose
im
humoral
diagrams
or
that
As
Rabelais
illness
disorder.
fifteenth-cen
quotes
is,
balance,
"Et mon urine
Pierre Pathelin:
tury farceur, Ma?tre
/ Vous diet elle
original
que jemeure?
[And doesn't my urine tell you that I am dying?]"
as exemplified
comic abuse of the
(519). Not surprisingly,
by Pathelin's
a
owes
to
avoid
what
he
cloth
ap
uroscopy
practice
paying
merchant,
on the part of both pa
all sorts of charlatanism,
encouraged
parently
poinct
A Dictionarie
and English
Cotgrave,
of the French
S. Woods
SC: University
of South Carolina
(Columbia,
5. R?ndle
William
"urine"
As
(no pagination).
one of the toadying
Tongues
Press,
[1611],
1950),
intro.
entry
for
to goad
attempts
bien
"Je vouldrois
que
pour veoir de leur urine
r?sistassent,
[I
would much
like to see those merry
of Rhodes,
just try to resist you so
knights,
formerly
see their urine]."
uvres compl?tes,
that we may
See Fran?ois Rabelais,
Hu
ed. Mireille
chon
(Paris: Gallimard,
1994), 93. Similarly,
Quaresmeprenant
temps
reportedly
"passoit
? veoir
l'urine des Physeteres"
in the Quart
whales'
livre
[spent time examining
urine]"
him
ministers
war
into an imprudent
les plaisans
chevaliers
of the megalomaniacal
against Gargantua's
vous
jadis Rhodiens
from Rabelais
(636). All quotations
are mine
indicated.
unless
otherwise
are taken
father,
from
Picrochole
Grandgousier:
the Huchon
edition;
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all translations
140
Yale French
Studies
tient and physician.
In the English
tradition uroscopists
apparently
came known
as
least
(at
derisively)
"pisse-prophets."6
to the practice of medicine
of uroscopy
Such was the centrality
be
that
one of the chief identifying
its figurai representation
became
emblems
as
in the popular
and advertisements,
enshrined
the stan
imagination
saint of physicians,
Saint Cosmas,
dard attribute
of the patron
who,
along with
were
the
patron saint of apothecaries,
invoked against the plague,
impetigo,
and stomachs,
for our
and, more
interesting
his brother
Dami?n,
most
often
interceding martyrs
swollen glands
ringworm,
current purposes,
stones and nocturnal
and bladder
inconti
kidney
under third-century
nence.7 Martyred
emperor Diocletian,
they are (or
as As
medieval
modern
Christians
and
best
remembered
were)
by
early
clepius-style
immortalized
healers,
as Dami?n
iconographically
and Cosmas
the Uroscopist,
jar in hand,
Apothecary,
druggist's
nostic matula
held high.
Uroscopy
inspired one of the standard
the
diag
as
for physicians
epithets
en
visitent
Gu?rissans
well: "Les m?decins,
gens
temps et
urines,
qui
/
en saison
in timely
examine
who
urine,
/ curing people
[Physicians,
as
Pierre
dramatic
poet
contemporary
Gringore's
allegorized
fashion],"
the hapless
and helpless
and moralizing
characterizes
Coqueluche
physicians
throughout
Rondibilis
of whooping
cough in Paris and
during the 1510 epidemic
In the Tiers livre Panurge mocks
the physician
France.8
student
the standard medical
insult: Stercus et urina
with
sunt prandia prima
breakfast]
[Shit and urine are a physician's
as attribute
serves
the
the matula
of "la Diette,"
(460). Likewise
"
or
Pox
in
the
attendant
"Dailie
anonymous
upon
Fare,
"Regime"
Lady
et puis
de treshaulte
but decidedly
Rabelaisian
Triumphe
Lyonnais
Medici
sante Dame
Verolle,
Royne
du Puy d'Amours
[Triumph
of the Exalted
see works
treat
cited in note
of uroscopy,
6. For general
1; for specific
explanations
see
in early modern
of it and of the "pisse-prophets"
literature,
English
Joseph
in Early Modern
and Art. Stud
in Fecal Matters
Literature
"Tamburlaine's
Urine,"
T?te,
138
UK: Ashgate,
and Russell
Ganim
ies in Scatology,
ed. Jeff Persels
2004),
(Aldershot,
ments
I am grateful.
I have
earlier addressed
the practice
French polemical
theater.
in
related
early modern
topic
pects
Distress
Church
of the Roman
Catholic
"The
the Intestinal
Staging
111.
56 (2003): 1089-1
Renaissance
French Reform
Theater,"
Quarterly
vol. 3 (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de l'art chr?tien,
7. Louis R?au, Iconographie
53,
for whose
shared
research
and applications
Trots:
Sorbonnic
France,
1953), 334.
8. Pierre Gringore,
(Paris: P. Jannet,
taiglon
uvres
1858),
as
on
of this
compl?tes,
192.
?d. Charles
d'H?ricault
and Antoine
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See
de Mon
in
de
JEFF PERSELS
and Powerful
Lady Pox, Queen of the Love Guild]
of Gout, with
tified early on as the "grandmother"
Amoureux
together with Souvenir
of the painful
triptych
himself
with
bears
mercury
141
of 1539.9 She is iden
she is linked,
a
in sort of thematic
whom
[Love's Token],
after" of sexual excess. Love's Token
"morning
the unguent
associated
jar and spatula most
commonly
treatment
for syphilis,
which
Rabelais
also
concerning
waxes
to Pantagruel
in the prologue
(214).
eloquent
One of the symptoms
associated
with
venereal
disease, whether
mal
du
si?cle
for
Rabelais
and
his
the
syphilis
contemporaries)
(perhaps
or gonorrhea, was obstruction
of the urethra. This was treated most ag
care
if painfully,
health
by early modern
to
as
it
involved
external
med
surgeons
practitioners,
falling primarily
rather than a pharmacological
icine, a physical
corrective,
though the
as
latter served
Another
accompaniment.
invariably
Montpellier
and successfully,
gressively
educated,
practitioner,
Lyons-based
for
Dalechamps,
example,
published
which
instruments
includes
surgical
and botanist
physician
Jacques
a Chirurgie
in 1570,
fran?oise
used in such treat
commonly
Par? and other
Ambroise
in
surgeons
routinely
publishing
accounts
with
of
their
corporated
precise plates
similarly
application.
Par?'s vernacular
in 1574, cite two particularly
uvres, first published
ments.10
vivid
"case
voked
studies."
by respectful
we
Which
a life-threatening
First,
of urine
suppression
pro
modesty:
seen
have
to many,
happen
and
not
long
to a young
ago
ser
vant who was
returning from the fields on horseback, bearing behind
an honest maiden and well accompanied,
him his mistress,
and while
was
he
seized
with the need to piss. He dared not dismount, how
riding
nor
ever,
even
attempting
less
urinate
while
on horseback.
Upon
in town,
arriving
at last to piss, he could not, and suffering great pain and
cramps
[the word
"a great
desire
Par?
to goe
uses
to
is espreintes,
the
stoole"],
which
and
sweating
all
as
translates
Cotgrave
he
over,
almost
fainted. At this point Iwas sent for and told itwas a stone that kept him
from pissing. When I arrived, I inserted a catheter into the bladder and
by this method he pissed about a pint of water. I found no stone, nor has
he
felt
one
9. Triumphe
since.11
de
treshaulte
et puissante
Dame
Verolle,
Royne
du
Puy
[1539] (Paris:Blassac, 1997).
10.
Jacques Dalechamps,
Chirurgie
fran?oise
(Lyons, 1573), 322.
uvres
11. Ambroise
Par?,
(Paris: Gabriel
Buon,
1599), 537. My
translation.
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d'amours
142
Yale French Studies
Second,
an ultimately
temporary
English
"
referred
deadly case of "pisse chaulde,
as the "burnt piss":
medical
manuals
to in con
a few excesses, did not fail to be struck
This man, having committed
down instantly with a suppression of urine, in consequence of which he
was unable to urinate without
the help of a catheter which he always
carried with him. One day he was unable to insert it all the way into the
bladder and so sent forme
whatever
More
possible
him piss, which Iwas unable to do,
was the cause of his death. (594)
I
This
tried.
remedy
tomake
de Montaigne's
of his father's ago
experience
with
his own fears of
fatal
renal
calculi
fed
nized, ultimately
struggle
a
a
to considerable
such
death and influenced,
"inheriting"
degree, both
his essays and his travel journal, the latter a record of a European
spa
famously,
tour undertaken,
Less invasive
sion or retention
Michel
in part, to ease the passage of stones.
to remedy suppres
were, of course, employed
and early modern
of urine, and medieval
pharmacol
at least
means
the most
in
oft-mentioned
of which
ogy did not lack for diuretics,
to
one
home
taken
cluded
remedies
among
internally,
according
German
manual:
acorns, pars
contemporary
horseradish,
apothecary's
or
dried
and
crab
eyes,daisies,
crayfish
and, applied
ground
ley-root,
"
a sliv
a
to
hot
the
fennel
or, worse,
"privy member,
poultice,
topically
into the urethra,
and among more
ered onion inserted
pre
expensive
the ground
scribed medications,
a glosse
with
wormes,
sheninge
more
known
recently
popularly
aphrodisiac
of cantharides,
that is "green
"
a
scale
and
lyke golde,
lyke a bittel,
as "Spanish
Fly," for its purported
heads
qualities.12
LES BONNES GENS, POUR CELA, NE PISSERONT
PAS PLUS ROIDE13
as abundant
source of natural ammonia
has long been recognized
most
in
tech
the
and exploited,
very cutting-edge
notably
printing,
to
to
cites in the prologue
Pantagruel
(216). Similar
nology Rabelais
or so we may
most
would
writers,
Rabelais,
speculate,
early modern
of
intimate
the
actual
mechanics
with
have had amore
acquaintance
Urine
printing
than we
could
expect
of later authors.
von Braunschwig,
A most
12. Hieronymus
all thegrefes
cary e or homely
bookefor
physick
Hollybush
excellent
and diseases
Though
any more
as
not
and perfecte
homish
apothe
trans. Thomas
of the bodye,
(London, 1561), 37v.
for all that, will not piss
13. Literally,
"People,
be any better off. See Coltgrave,
entry for "pisser."
perhaps
"
vigorously,
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that
is, will
not
JEFF PERSELS
familiar with
143
Ra
of printer's
ink as Montaigne,
in the pub
of the role urine played
traces the often determining
role the ma
and texture
the smell
aware
belais may well have been
lishing trade.14 Colin H. Bloy
terial
life of the early modern
of books:
and its crew played
press
in both
the form
and content
Having made the ink, and applied it to the type, the last problem was
the removal of this ink when washing up. The general practise was to
take a strong alkaline solution and scrub the type. This saponified the
oil, making
...
gent.
it easy
In the
ammonia
The
tic effect.
stances,
to remove.
earlier
days
by urine
produced
Such practices,
an
a time
after
early
was
the use
along with
to make
combined
action
The
of printing
similar
to that
of urine
was
would
have
of a deter
widespread.
a strong
caus
the other equally noxious
house
printing
a most
sub
unhealthy
to work.15
and stinking place inwhich
urine was used in the production
of the sheepskin
Moreover,
balls,
stuffed with wool or hair, long used for inking the type,- it softened
the
to J.Moxon's
Mechanick
leather, according
late-seventeenth-century
the
earliest
in
manual
of
Exercises,
any
purportedly
printing
language:
But if his pelts are dry, he lays them to soak (by choice in Chamber-ly
[i.e., urine]) but I never heard or by my experience could find why it is
preferred before FairWater: For the purpose of soaking them is only to
supple
them.16
they were
And
soaked
traditionally
to keep them
in urine
or during
overnight,
the
break,
mid-day
Urine was also used
supple (Bloy, 53).
as a "mordant"
in the cloth-dying
industry that
made
the fortune of so many medieval
and early modern
communities,
in Italy and the Low Countries.
The more
alum
effective
particularly
one
for
was, of course, preferred, when
available?only
dye formula,
out of scores in Giovanventura
Rosetti's
example,
de larte che insegna
Plictho
tenger pani stipulates
not, as in the early days of European New World
served
in its stead.17
14. On Montaigne's
Similarly,
in
involvement
Career
George Hoffmann,
Montaigne's
15. Colin H. Bloy, A History
the veritable
the publication
Clarendon
Ink, Balls
of his
Press,
and Rollers,
Essais,
see
1998).
1440-1850
1548
when
settlements,
of dog urine
deluge
(Oxford:
of Printing
oft-reedited
urine?but
urine
in Ra
especially
(London:
Wynkyn deWorde Society, 1967), 51.
16.
Mechanick
Joseph Moxon,
Davis
and Harry Carter
17. Giovanventura
Rosetti,
Herbert
teaches
the dyeing
of woolen
Exercises
on
the Whole
(London: Oxford University
The Plictho,
instructions
clothes,
linens,
cottons,
and
Art
of Printing,
1683-84,
ed.
Press,
1958), 81.
in the art of the dyers which
as
silk by the great art as well
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144
Yale French
Studies
a mean-spirited
when
Pantagruel,
Parisian
the well-born
refused
lady who
belais's
serving
usefully
the fabled Gobelin
Panurge plays a "trick" on
his advances,
ends up most
scarlet dye factory
(297, and Hu
chon'snote,
1313).
The role that urine
in alchemy
and the sciences
played
being born
it
in
the early modern
in part
from
been explored
period has recently
and in both learned and lively fashions by John Emsley. A century or so
after Rabelais,
urine, the alchemist's
"golden stream," would prove the
if relatively
the cycle of which
poor, source for phosphorus,
on
urine played a significant
all life
earth."18 Similarly,
part
"governs
a key ingredient
in
in the production
of saltpeter
(potassium
nitrate),
initial,
one of the principal
cat
of all sorts, especially
pyrotechnics
gunpowder,
with
of
social
and
Rabelais's
era.19
change beginning
alysts
political
in the Quart
"De leur urine,"
claims
livre,
sheep trader Dindenault
tirent
le
his
"les
meilleur
of
Quintessentiaux
superior breed,
speaking
du monde
Salp?tre
[From their urine
the alchemists
the best
produce
Lem
later, Nicolas
in the world]"
(Rabelais, 552). A century
saltpeter
Cours de chymie documented
what was already a long
ery's influential
from
of
whether
and established
practice
directly
saltpeter production,
or
urine
urine
from
humid
and
manure,
vegetation,
(primarily animal)
mixtures
forms naturally.20
found in stables, where
saltpeter
thera
and animal, were also long accorded
and feces, human
From
in the unofficial
of
folk
the
virtues
medicine.21
protocol
left off concerning
his wondrous
livre again, where Dindenault
Urine
peutic
Quart
trans. Sidney M. Edelstein
C. Borghetty
and Hector
by the common,
MIT Press,
1981).
The 13th Element.
The Sordid Tale of Murder,
18. John Emsley,
rus (New York: John Wiley
and Sons, 2000), 2.
Bombards
19. See, for example,
Jack Kelly, Gunpowder:
Alchemy,
ed., The Cambridge
Parker,
2004), and Geoffrey
(New York: Basic Books,
UK: Cambridge
The Triumph
tory of Warfare:
of the West
(Cambridge,
(Cambridge,
Fire,
MA:
and Phospho
and Pyrotechnics
His
Illustrated
University
Press,
1995).
contenant
la maniere
de faire les operations
Cours
de chymie
Lemery,
en usage dans la m?decine,
par une m?thode
facile
(Paris, 1675).
see especially
of this tradition,
For recent
reminders
Ralph A. Lewin,
popular
in Scientific,
and Socio-Historical
Excursions
Cultural,
(New York:
Coprology
and
and Mich?le
Mud, Maggots
Honey,
Root-Bernstein,
House,
1999); Robert
20. Nicolas
qui
sont
21.
Merde:
Random
Other Medical Marvels
(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin,
1997); and Joseph
Context
of Scatolog
Shit: the Pragmatic
with Mary
Simon,
"Holy and Unholy
Schmidt,
in Early Modern
Lit
in Fecal Matters
in Early German
Reformation
ical Curses
Satire,"
in Scatology,
Ganim
UK:
erature
and Russell
ed. Jeff Persels
and Art, Studies
(Aldershot,
to my knowledge,
is yet wanting
Extended
109-17.
attention,
scholarly
2004),
Ashgate,
in this area.
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JEFF PERSELS
145
les medicins
de nos
(mais qu'il ne vous d?plaise)
et
soixante
dixhuict
esp?ces de maladies
pays gu?rissent
[Using their
in our country cure
(if you'll pardon my French) the doctors
droppings
flock: "De leurs crottes
in par
(Rabelais, 552). The Germans,
as
of
recorded
it,
ticular,
thoroughly
by physi
in his Heyl
and historiographer
Paullini
Christianus
cian, archivist,
same Dreck-Apothecke
in
first published
[Salutary Filth-Pharmacy),
of
1696.22 The
excrement,
urine,
therapeutic
qualities
particularly
have a distinguished
classical pedigree?Greek
physician Dioscorides'
types of disease]"
the most
evidently made
seventy-eight
the De Materia
for example,
circulated
Medica,
herbal,
first-century
in
the
and
late
medieval
modern
and
would
have
widely
early
period
a
to Rabelais
From
1554
Latin
been known
transla
(Antonioli
50-51).
in Lyons: "Drinking
one's own urine is an antidote
for
sea
disease
venoms,
blisters,causing
Scorpion
stings,
viper bites,
"23 Itwas
snakes and dragons.
especially
prized, when applied topically,
its soothing
for its antiseptic
and healing or scab-stimulating
qualities,
tion published
or erysipelas
skin inflammation
caused by ergotism
(the
or St. Anthony's
Fire of Rabelaisian
its
of
relief
curses),
or
of
various
constrictions
womb
infections
and
ob
eye
postpartum
on
structions
of which
based primarily
virtues,
[strangulatus)?many
of the painful
feu St-Antoine
the presence
of urea, have apparently
been confirmed
research and medical
chemical
practice.24 Dioscorides
bio
by modern
values above all
of a prepubescent
in the treatment
of severe
boy, efficacious
once
a
in brass pot [in areo
asthma and,
reduced with honey by boiling
most
for
useful
corneal
vase),
ulcers, and blurred vi
cleansing wounds,
the urine
in general
sion
(158).
male feces, seems to have singular value.
urine, not tomention
to the West,
first "vulgarizer"
confirms
that it "re
Pliny, Dioscorides'
Male
22.
Christianus
Paullini,
furt, 1714).
23. Dioscorides,
Pedacii
trans. Andr?
24.
vatives
New
Matthieu
Forms
of urea
Neu-
Vermehrte,
Dioscorides
(Lyons: Antoine
are commonly
in hypoallergenic
Zealand
Dermatological
products.
Heylsame
Anazarbei
...
Dreck-Apothecke,
de Materia
Medica
Vincent,
1554), 158.
as humectants
used
in cosmetics
See,
for example,
NZDermNet,
libri
and
the website
(Frank
sex
as preser
of the
Society,
http://www.dermnetnz.org/index.html
(accessed
the Eucerin Medical
Website,
http://www.eucerinus.com/
lists urea among
(accessed
medicalsite/medical.html
September
7,2005), which
ingredi
ents in a number
source of nitrogen
of skincare
It is also the principal
for fertil
products.
September
7, 2005).
Also
as a by-product
izer and is primarily
obtained
of the petrochemical
For an expla
industry.
of its commercial
the European
Fertilizer Manufacturers
see, for example,
synthesis
Association
and Urea Ammo
e.g., Production
(EFMA) on-line
Of Urea
publications,
nation
nium
Nitrate,
http://www.efma.org/index.asp
(accessed
September
7, 2005).
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146
Yale French
Studies
as is shown
of fullers, who
for that rea
by the testimony
never
from
suffer
That
of
it."25
they say,
exemplary
physically
all the better for a bit of wine, was apparently
young men,
especially
de
the letters of Madame
century,
prized. Even in the late seventeenth
or
of "essence"
years cite the topical application
S?vign?'s
declining
Heves
gout,
son,
as a soporific,
to ease muscular
pain, and its ingestion
"esprit d'urine,"
recourse
to have had relatively
to which
she seems
(cited
frequent
in Root-Bernstein,
126).26 Her preferred brand, it seems, was distilled
order. Old urine, notes Pliny, again following
Dio
by the Capuchin
was
most
in
the
salves
skin
effective
rashes
for
of
scorides,
ingredient
all sorts
(28.19).
urine had its value
as well,
judging from the following
recipe
in something
of a latter-day Materia Medica,
von Braunschwig's
the aforementioned
Liber de arte dis
Hieronymous
in Strasbourg
in 1500. This "precious water"
first published
tillandi,
Female
for a catholicon
was
included
to be particularly
in the cure of that most un
successful
and contagious
infec
of medieval
and characteristic
parasitic
a
1527 English
translation:
leprosy. From
considered
clean
tions,
fylynge of yron, of copper, of tynne, of lede, of latton, of golde, &
of sylver, of each lyke moche: all these thynges shall be layd a daye and
a nyght, in warme uryne of a chylde that is yet amay de, than a day and
a nyght inwhyte wyne, than laye it a day & a nyght in the iuce of fenel,
than a day and a nyght in the whyte of an egge, then lay it a day &. a night
Take
in rede wyne.
Than
a day
and
a nyght
in the whyte
of
.vii.
egges,
Than
all these substaunces
that the sayd fylingys have layde in togy
to
in
it
the
that ye will dystille in, and do that with
and
vessell
put
der,
softe fyre. And the same that cometh out of your styllatory ye shall sepe
in a sylver vessell for that this water clenseth and heleth all maner of
of the body
lepry, natural & onnatural and it puryfyeth all uncleenes
hath been proved, but I shewe not all the vertues of this water for he that
mixce
knewe
all his vertues wolde
be to prowde.27
even
makes
late seventeenth-century
Dreck-Apothecke
virtues
for the analeptic
of both liquid and
claims
impressive
Paullini's
more
in Dominique
Histoire
Cited
naturalis.
Laporte,
the Elder, Natural
History,
1978), 82. See Pliny
Bourgois,
MA: Harvard
28.19.
Press,
University
1938-63),
(Cambridge,
26. See also, Marie
de Rabutin
de S?vign?,
Chantai,
Marquise
vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard,
1972), 152, 199, and 208.
Roger Duch?ne,
25. Historiae
Christian
von Braunschwig,
The Vertuose
Boke
27. Hieronymus
. . .
Theatrum
of herbes
of all maner
[1527] (Amsterdam:
Da Capo Press,
added).
1973), xiiv
(emphasis
de
la merde
(Paris:
trans. H. Rackham
Correspondance,
of Distyllacyon
Orbis Terrarum
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ed.
of the waters
York:
/ New
JEFF PERSELS
even
147
the most
difficult,
deadly
to
illnesses
toe, both internal and ex
injuries, from head
cured"
the
ternal, can be successfully
(title page).28 Martin
Schopf,
somewhat
author
of
the
work's
with
reminds
us,
preface,
obsequious
that man himself
is formed of the
license,
perhaps a bit of exegetical
solid waste:
"almost
all, yes!
the most
and sorcerous
filth of the earth. He
for those
we
first critical
should
not,
substances.
same
whether,
rhetorically
nine months
of gestation
homeopathically
As promised,
remedies
grown"
are nurtured
inter f ces et urinam,
restored
speaking,
by the very
Paullini
delivers quite literally
"home
for everything
from madness
lepsy to impotence,
in emphasis,
centric
since we
asks
be
to hair
from headache
loss, from epi
His work may be ec
of such thinking,
either es
to melancholy.
the very traces
writers
by myriad medical
or rejected
but
of the medieval
and early
current of belief in
and deep-rooted
the therapeutic
in its ability, figuratively
value of excrement,
speaking,
to help one "pisser plus roide," or piss more vigorously.
poused
modern
period,
attest
to a shared
COMME SI DIEU Y EUST PISS?29
How
even
arcane con
cursory
survey of such seemingly
and
scientific
temporary
knowledge,
pieced
together primar
a reading of Ra
of anecdotal
influence
sources,
ily from a hodge-podge
or European
belais
of early modern
French
and, more
generally,
might
this
cultural
are two major
acts
a diabolically
literature?
There
gruel. The
first concerns
of human
micturition
diuretic
in Panta
administered
potent
by
well-watered
Panurge to the giant hero after a particularly
feast, on the
eve of the climactic
encounter
between
forces and the
King Anarch's
valiant but woefully
outnumbered
band of Utopian
defenders.
Soubdain print envie ? Pantagruel de pisser ? cause des drogues que luy
avoit baill? Panurge, et pissa parmy leur camp si bien et copieusement
qu'il les noya tous: et y eut deluge particulier dix lieues ? la ronde. (315)
Pantagruel suddenly got the urge to piss, due to the drugs that Panurge
had given him, and he pissed in the middle of their camp, so well and
that he drowned all of them, resulting in a flood for ten
copiously
leagues
around.
28. I thank Josef Schmidt
for help with
translations.
29. "Par tous les champs
piss?.
sprouts
Il n'y
fault
as if God
for bringing
this volume
to my
attention,
and Eva
S?nger
es quelz
ilz pissent,
comme
le bled y provient
si Dieu
y eust
ne fumier
aultre marne,
the grain
[In all the fields in which
they pissed,
had pissed
is need of no other marl nor manure]
there. There
(Rabelais,
552).
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148
Yale French
Studies
for the purgative
dose to take its calculated
waiting
effect,
sows
the
mouths
of the snoring enemy with
gaping
Pantagruel
salt,
an artfully assisted nature
and, when
finally calls, he directs her dilu
vian stream?a
much more
scaled piss, or so the nar
apocalyptically
While
rator points out to us, than even that of his father Gargantua's
mare?
a
the
and
against
gasping,
surprised,
aptly-named
Dipsodes,
drowning
to both epic Classical
of them.30 The expected
allusions
good number
and Biblical acts of "ethnic cleansing"?the
Ovidian myth
of flood and
the Israelite
evacuation
Yaweh's
of what
politic,
Pantagruel
relieves
micturition,
to the
inundation?are
linked explicitly
40-day
is in the process of becoming
the Rabelaisian
His urine, his artificially-induced
himself.31
body
act of
not only himself
and cleanses
but the world.
to find this therapeutically
It is perhaps not surprising
act
purgative
more
at
the chronicle's
A
close (Rabelais, 333-34).
repeated
pointedly
a monumental
case of the
is struck down with
victorious
Pantagruel
referred to in contemporary
"pisse chaulde,"
as the "burnt piss," an affliction Ambroise
manuals
English medical
as follows:
Par? profiles
the burnt piss, or burning urine, is a yellowish,
sometimes
greenish,
sometimes bloody serosity which comes out of the penis, close in qual
and fetid pus, with a sharpness which most often
ity to an undercooked
at and
gnaws
of the penis
that
pulls
ferer
ulcers,
tinue
feels
ulcerates
and
the
genitals
the penis
grievous
two
or
pain
three
so witness
on urinating,
them. Now
or more
years,
a
provoking
who
sufferers
. . . Since
downward.
bites and pricks
tract,
urinary
...
the
tract
because
painful
say
is ulcerated,
the urine
passing
the flow of said serosity
which
leads
us
erection
it is like
to believe
a cord
the
by
suf
the
can con
that
the
burnt-piss has nothing in common with gonorrhea [which he had de
fined earlier as an involuntary flux of semen] . . . since it is impossible
the
that semen could flow out of the body for such a long time without
.
.
.
debilitated
and
weakened
and
languid,
body becoming
eventually
dying.
(592)
see Huchon's
note 209.1
of "Dipsodes"
the etymology
(Ra
("the Thirsty"),
in Paris, where
he "pays" the
has a similar
adventure
Gargantua
1233). Rabelais's
on them from atop Notre-Dame:
"Lors en soubriant
destacha
their due by pissing
en l'air les compissa
sa belle braguette,
et tirant sa mentule
si aigrement,
qu'il en noya
et petiz enfans
Sans les femmes
deux cens soixante mille,
quatre cens dix et huyt.
[Then,
30.
On
belais,
citizens
out his tool, he pissed all over them
and, pulling
codpiece
two hundred
and eigh
and sixty thousand
four hundred
the women
and little children]"
(48).
he untied
his beautiful
smiling,
so copiously
that he drowned
teen
of them, not counting
See both Metamorphoses
31.
Pantagruel
Rabelais's
and
Pantagruel
1.260-312
and Genesis
7-8.
On
see especially
of the body politic,
Edwin
CT / London:
Yale University
(New Haven,
the notion
allegorical
Duval,
Press,
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
of
readings
The Design
of
1991), 125-34.
JEFF PERSELS
149
are three: from "excessive
of
e.g., over abundance
repletion,"
or
on
too
in
in
the sun,
hot and
horseback
blood,
over-indulgence
long
flatulent
e.g., exhaustion
inanition,"
foods; from "excessive
stemming
in sexual activity,- and from "conta
from over-heated
over-indulgence
of
those who are already
the
result
company with
gion," i.e.,
keeping
Its causes
infected, whether man or woman
(593), the wages
to the wrath of God, who has allowed
this illness
race in order
to moderate
its lascivious
of sin, "attributable
to afflict the human
and disproportionate
concupis
cence"
(579).
Rabelais
provides
no specific
for Pantagruel's
responsible
Christian
low the exemplary
clue as to which
affliction,
Humanist
but
there
Prince
of the three causes
is no reason not
is
to al
high road, all
by Par?, can safely be
repletion,"
Be that
said to characterize
the activities
of the preceding
chapters.32
as it may, Par?'s prognosis
runs as follows:
"A case of the burnt-piss
the more
so as "excessive
the moral
as defined
can come
should not be neglected,
several pernicious
accidents
because
. . .
some are incurable
a
to
of it, among which
sup
leading
complete
. . .and sometimes
course
of urine
death"
pression
(594). His suggested
own physi
is much
of treatment
the same as that of Pantagruel's
ses medicins
cians'?"mais
le secoururent
et tresbien
force
avecques
cured him, and
et diureticques
de drogues
lenitives
[but his doctors
with
and
diuretic
many
well,
(Rabelais, 333)?pro
soothing
drugs]"
instant relief. Fortunately
almost
for Pantagruel,
voking
aggressively
was not required. That relief comes
intervention
in the
mechanical
form of a second
one which
act of micturition,
both purges the
a
for
certain
celebrated
teleological
body politic
explanation
hot springs. The spa of Cauterets,
for example,
of
for
point
departure
the characters
and the narrative
of Marguerite
de Navarre's
Hep
diluvian
and offers
tam?ron,
figures
later
visited
Italy
first on Rabelais's
list. He
also
Whether
includes
drank
a number
in
of or bathed
in
by Montaigne.
they
as
such
the
and
fashionable
fash
them, Early Moderns,
Heptam?ron's
virtues with
thermal
ionably eloquent
invalids, associated
therapeutic
for sufferers of intestinal
and of renal
springs, specifically
complaints
was
a result of over-indulgence
32. Pantagruel's
halitosis
of chapter
32 evidently
in
a garlicky
over Anarche
tant d'aillade"
stew?"alors
had
qu'il mangea
(332). The victory
also been marked
and "belles
de force vivres
tables rondes garnies
dress?es
by bonfires
par les rues. Ce
ch?re [beautiful
feut un renouvellement
round
tables
bountifully
du temps de Saturne,
laid. Itwas a return
tant y fut faicte lors grande
so plen
to the age of Saturn,
tifully did they eat]" (Rabelais 323).
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150
Yale French
calculi.
Thus
Studies
are Pantagruel's
themselves
purged
body politic,
of their sovereign.
the diverse members
subjects,
in the very life-giving
and healed,
of the
urine
career culmi
by all the trials of the chronicles,
Pantagruel's
a
in
most
least
(at
trial,
temporarily)
personal,
physical
pointedly
in that most
and specifically
human and humiliating
characteristically
one of illness
one that inflicted
in the bowels,
both pain and burning
Tested
nates
and one
to purification,
to replicate
that promises
itself thera
as
as
the
hot
among
piss springs flow. Let
subjects
peutically
long
us return to early modern
in this essay. "Pour
"uses" of urine sketched
veoir de leur urine," or "by their urine shall we know
them": the piss
prior
his
Humanist
of the allegorized
and idealized Christian
prince, whose
body
is both private and public,
that is, of the prince and of the realm, may
to determine
be read "uroscopically"
the health of that body, a "golden
stream"
that both
whether
touches,
ing hordes
cleanses
the body
it be a negative
or a positive
The goodness
it evacuates
and
the bodies
it
in the drowning
of invad
purgation
in the curing of ailing bathers
and
purgation
of the prince
even to his urine,
thus extends
the
the "filth
that represents
Dreck-Apotheke,
quintessentially
excrement
the
heals
the
of
of the prince's body
corruption
pharmacy":
"
"comme
si Dieu y eust piss?,
his subjects,
literally and metaphorically
had pissed there."
that is, "as if God himself
drinkers.
urine
or distracting
far from detracting
from
humor,"
is their
reinforces what many have contended
his chronicles,
actually
in
and
the
lowest
the
of
agenda, proof
political
evangelical
things
high
est purpose
and design. Reintegrating
piss into the cul
Pantagruel's
Rabelais's
tural context
"bathroom
from which
it flowed, recovering
but lost to us?that
both
the prosaic and the
Early Moderns
arguably
poetic
relationship?all
as
to
two
minor
with
their
the
reference
excrement,
foregoing
enjoyed
to
it
that
vernacular
passages
do, suggests
only begins
strongly
might
in other contemporary
works.
like references
be fruitful to reconsider
as
to its history
urine to its material
history,
early modern
as
in
and
cultural
that
material,
is,
standing
physical
product,
specific
to its producers,
inter
and at least partially
salvageable
relationship
could very well enrich our understanding
preters and, yes, consumers,
Restoring
from
of early modern
culture and literature. And, who knows? Taken
a robust if bibulous
or prepubescent
and
domestic
virgin,
applied topi
indeed
urine, hot or cold, may
figuratively,
cally, or, perhaps merely
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JEFF PERSELS
151
the one that ex
mentions,
for and quick dismissal
of the frequent refer
plains our blind distaste
ence to human
excrement
that so obviously
the authors we
inspired
heal us of the "blurred
here
read and whose
vision"
leavings
Dioscorides
nourish
us, both materially
ally.
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and spiritu