Galen has long ago confirmed and demonstrated it, Book 3, De temperamentis,
Original French: Galen l’auoit long temps a confermé & demonſtré lib. 3. de temperamentis
Modern French: Galen l’avoit long temps a confermé & demonstré li. 3. de temperamentis
Rabelais, doctor in medicine, was familiar with the works of the Greek physician Galen.
Of temperaments (On Mixtures): Περί κράσεων (peri kraseon); De Temperamentis (Temp.); book III was also translated as De Complexionibus (On the Complexions) [Not in the Loeb Classical Library].
Notes
Letter of Gargantua to Pantagruel
Comment Pantagruel estant à Paris receupt lettres de son pere Gargantua, et la copie d’icelles.
Et quant à la congnoissance des faitz de nature, Ie veulx que tu t’y adonne curieusement, qu’il n’y ait mer, ryviere, ny fontaine, dont tu ne congnoisse les poissons, tous les oyseaulx de l’air, tous les arbres arbustes & fructices des forestz, toutes les herbes de la terre, tous les metaulx cachez au ventre des abysmes, les pierreries de tout orient & midy, riens ne te soit incongneu. Puis songneusement revisite les livres des medecins, Grecs, Arabes, & Latins, sans contemner les Thalmudistes & Cabalistes, & par frequentes anatomyes acquiers toy parfaicte congnoissance de l’aultre monde, qui est l’homme. Et par quelques heures du iour comme à visiter les sainctes lettres. Premierement en Grec le nouveau testament et Epistres des apostres, & puis en Hebrieu le vieulx testament.
…
Galen
Galen only says [greek] and wants [greek].
Salamander
Smith’s reference to Galen’s comment on the salamander
Galen
«Sicut enim Salamandra ad certum usque terminum ab igne nihil partitur, uritur autem si longiore spatio igne sit admota». Galen, de Temperamentis, l. III, ch. 4.
Google translation: “As far as there is nothing for a specific time limit set by the fire, for it is shared by the Salamander the stone, just as he is on fire, however, if the fire be conveniently placed by a distance greater.”
Galen
Galien, De temperamentis, III, 4. Déjà dans l’Antiquité Dioscoride (II, 54) s’était prononcé contre cette superstition (EC).
Chronology
1520 Rabelais is known at this date to have been a monk at the Franciscan priory of Le Puy-Saint-Martin, at Fontenay- le-Comte. He studies Greek with his fellow priest, Pierre Lamy (or Amy), and moves in the humanist circles of André Tiraqueau (1480–1558).
1521 Rabelais sends a letter to Guillaume Budé́ (1468–1540), the leading French humanist of his day. Although the letter is in Latin, it contains much Greek and shows Rabelais’s commitment to the “New Learning.”
1523 The Greek books of Rabelais and Lamy are confiscated by their religious superiors, only to be returned a year later.
However, Lamy leaves the monastery.
1530 François I founds the Royal College, later to become the Collège de France. It is headed by Guillaume Budé. Rabelais registers as a student in the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier. He attends an anatomy lesson given by Rondelet and gains his Bachelor of Medicine degree in November of the same year.
1531 He lectures at Montpellier on Hippocrates and Galen.
1532 In June, he publishes the second volume of Manardi’s Medical Letters, with a dedicatory letter to Tiraqueau. In August, he follows this up with publications of Latin translations of treatises by Hippocrates and Galen, with a dedication of one major treatise to Geoffroy d’Estissac.
