My Lord,

Your most humble, and most devoted Servant,

Francis Rabelais, Physician.

Paris, this 28th of January, MDLII.

The Author's Prologue.

Good people, God save and keep you! Where are you? I can't see you:
stay--I'll saddle my nose with spectacles--oh, oh! 'twill be fair anon: I
see you. Well, you have had a good vintage, they say: this is no bad news
to Frank, you may swear. You have got an infallible cure against thirst:
rarely performed of you, my friends! You, your wives, children, friends,
and families are in as good case as hearts can wish; it is well, it is as I
would have it: God be praised for it, and if such be his will, may you
long be so. For my part, I am thereabouts, thanks to his blessed goodness;
and by the means of a little Pantagruelism (which you know is a certain
jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune), you see me now hale and
cheery, as sound as a bell, and ready to drink, if you will. Would you
know why I'm thus, good people? I will even give you a positive answer
--Such is the Lord's will, which I obey and revere; it being said in his
word, in great derision to the physician neglectful of his own health,
Physician, heal thyself.

Galen had some knowledge of the Bible, and had conversed with the
Christians of his time, as appears lib. 11. De Usu Partium; lib. 2. De
Differentiis Pulsuum, cap. 3, and ibid. lib. 3. cap. 2. and lib. De Rerum
Affectibus (if it be Galen's). Yet 'twas not for any such veneration of
holy writ that he took care of his own health. No, it was for fear of
being twitted with the saying so well known among physicians:

Iatros allon autos elkesi bruon.

He boasts of healing poor and rich,
Yet is himself all over itch.

This made him boldly say, that he did not desire to be esteemed a
physician, if from his twenty-eighth year to his old age he had not lived
in perfect health, except some ephemerous fevers, of which he soon rid
himself; yet he was not naturally of the soundest temper, his stomach being
evidently bad. Indeed, as he saith, lib. 5, De Sanitate tuenda, that
physician will hardly be thought very careful of the health of others who
neglects his own. Asclepiades boasted yet more than this; for he said that
he had articled with fortune not to be reputed a physician if he could be
said to have been sick since he began to practise physic to his latter age,
which he reached, lus