Rabelais Dissecting Society
Dublin Core
Title
Rabelais Dissecting Society
Subject
Medicine in art
Description
François Rabelais (ca. 1490-1553), who studied medicine at Paris just a few years before Vesalius, was likely a source of the derisive attacks against medicine addressed in the Fabrica: “we owe the fact that so many scoffs are wont to be cast at doctors, and this most holy art is made a mock.” In Book IV of Pantagruel, Rabelais compares medicine “to a combat and farce played by three personae: the patient, the doctor, and the illness.” In this image by Gustave Dore, Rabelais is portrayed as a scholar studying human figures impaled on pins as if they were butterflies (Lepidoptera). Besides the tome guiding his research, a second book represents a treatise on dissection, propped up against a row of specimen jars with fetuses floating in two of them.
Creator
Gustave Dore (1832-1883)
Source
François Rabelais, " Oeuvres, contenant la vie de Gargantua et celle de Pantagruel"
Publisher
J. Bry Aine, Paris
Date
1854
Contributor
Debra Cashion, in collaboration with Elisabeth Barrett, '15
Rights
Relation
Format
Wood engraving; original dimensions, 190 x 123 mm
Language
[no text]
Type
Still image
Identifier
[no text]
Coverage
[no text]
Files
Collection
Citation
Gustave Dore (1832-1883) , “Rabelais Dissecting Society,” The Anatomist: Early Modern Medical Satire, accessed March 29, 2024, https://anatomist.omeka.net/items/show/13.