From the outset medical men liked Rabelais. The earliest extant allusion to Pantagruel in print is found in a lecture delivered before the medical faculty at Nantes on 7 August 1534. The lecturer, an Italian physician, contrasts the modest contents of a proper enema with the enormous compound prescribed by a rival, more worthy, he thinks, of the giants in those recent books of Pantagruel enjoying such a success.
