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

Format

Wood engraving; original dimensions, 190 x 123 mm

Language

[no text]

Type

Still image

Identifier

[no text]

Coverage

[no text]

Files

Rabelais (2).jpg

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.