Notes

1605

La forte odeur du Chanvre chasse de la terre plusieurs herbes nuisibles, & besteletes importunes.

odeur

Rabelais donne à ce mot le genre masc. qu’avait le mot latin odor.

de ces deux nombres

Les feuilles du chanvre sont composées de cinq à sept folioles. Sur la symbolique de ces nombres, voir Agrippa, De occulta philosophia, II.

Notes

Five leaves

F44v. Cannabis was only recommended for external use: it could, for example, be pounded with grease and used to reduce swelling of the breasts.

TL, Chapter 20

“Now,” said Pantagruel, “he is informing us more positively, by giving us the sign of the quinary number. That means that you will certainly be married, and not only affiances, espoused, and married, but that, furthermore, you will cohabit and get on well with the job. Pythagoras called the quinary number the nuptial number, which indicated a wedding and the consummation of a marriage, being composed of the triad, which is the first odd and superfluous number, and of the dyad, which is the first even number. This signifies the males and female in copulation. Indeed at Rome, in the olden times, they would light five wax candles on a wedding day: and it was not permissible to light more, even at the marriage of the wealthiest, or fewer, even at the marriage of the very poorest. Moreover, in the olden days the pagans used to implore the assistance of five deities, or one god for five good offices, on behalf of those about to be married: of Jupiter, the nuptial god; of Juno, who presided over the feast; of Venus the fair; of Pitho, the goddess of persuasion and eloquence, and of Diana, who presided over childbirth.

Notes

The Sythians have hemp growing in their country

[The Sythians] have hemp growing in their country, very like flax, save that the hemp is by much the thicker and taller. This grows both of itself and also by their sowing, and of it the Thracians even make garments which are very like linen; nor could any, save he were a past master in hemp, know whether they be hempen or linen; whoever has never yet seen hemp will think the garment to be linen.

The Scythians then take the seed of this hemp and, creeping under the mats, they throw it on the red-hot stones; and, being so thrown, it smoulders and sends forth so much steam that no Greek vapour-bath could surpass it. The Scythians howl in their joy at the vapour-bath. This serves them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.

fills the Head with noxious and painful Vapours

The Arabs obtained from the pistils of the hemp-blossom in fermentation the drink they call Hashis, which is intoxicating even to madness.

Affects the head

“Like Dioscorides, Galen had little to say about cannabis, but he does state that the Romans, at least those with money, used to top off their banquets with a marijuana-seed dessert, a confectionery treat which left guests with a warm and pleasurable sensation. To be avoided, however, was an overindulgence in this confection, for among the adverse after-effects of too many seeds were dehydration and impotence. Other properties Galen mentions are antiflatulence and analgesia. “If consumed in large amounts,” he says, it “affects the head by sending to it a warm and toxic vapour.”

Galen, De Facultatibus Alimentorum 100.49.