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XXIII: Arcite's Illness and Vincent of Beauvais

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Pauline Aiken
Pauline Aiken*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The most complete and detailed study of a specific medical case in Chaucer is the account, in The Knight's Tale, of Arcite's injury, his gradually developing symptoms, the diagnosis of their underlying causes, the treatment applied, and the patient's eventual death. Boccaccio's Teseide describes the youth's accident but does not record the attempts of the physicians to save his life: the entire passage is an interpolation by Chaucer. The probable source of the poet's remarkably accurate knowledge of medicine is revealed by an examination of the medical chapters of the greatest of mediæval encyclopedias, the Speculum Majus of Vincent of Beauvais.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1936 , pp. 361 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 Speculum Doctrinale xv, cap. xxiv, “De Apostemate.”

2 Ibid., xv, cap. lxxxviii.

3 Ibid., xv, cap. lxxxix, “De Passionibus Cordis & primo de Cordiaca.”

4 Ibid., xv, cap. lxxxviii, “De Passionibus Accidentibus Operimento Costarum & Lacertis Pectoris et Dyafragmati.”

5 Ibid., xiii, cap. cxlvii, “De Alligatione Eiusdem.”

6 Ibid., xiii, cap. ix, “De Purgatione Corporis ad Custodiam Sanitatis.”

7 Ibid., xiii, cap. cxxxiv, “De Cyrurgia que Fit in Carne et primo de Ventosis.” It should be noted in connection with this excerpt that Vincent misquotes his source, the Canon of Avicenna, in such a way as to reverse the meaning of the last clause. Avicenna says that ventusing is of very little use in purging gross blood. (See Avicennae Canonis Liber i, fen iv, cap. xxi, “De Ventosis.”) Chaucer, in having Arcite's physicians employ ventusing, follows Vincent.

8 Ibid., xiii, cap. cxxxv, “De Triplici Ventosarum Usu.”

9 Ibid., xiv, cap. xlvii, “De Spiritibus.”

10 Sp. Naturale xxv, cap. iii, “De Viribus Anime quibus Commiscetur Corpori.”

11 Ibid., xxv, cap. iii, “De Viribus Anime quibus Commiscetur Corpori.”

12 Ibid., xxv, cap. ix, “De Actione Virtutis Expulsive in Eodem.”

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid., xxv, cap. lii, “Quod Vitalis Causa Sit Anhelitus ac Respirationis et Ceterorum.”

15 Ibid., xxvi, cap. xi, “Qualiter Omnes Sensus et Voluntarii Motus a Cerebro Diriguntur.”

16 Ibid., xxxii, cap. lxxiv, “De Anathomia Membrorum.”

17 Ibid., xxv, cap. lvi, “De Virtute Animali et eius Speciebus.”

18 Sp. Doc. xiv, cap. cxxxvi, “De Accidentibus Virtute Moventi & primo de eius Defectione.”

19 Sp. Nat. xxv, cap. iii, “De Viribus Anime quibus Commiscetur Corpori.”

20 Professor W. C. Curry believes that Chaucer's reference to the failure of the “vertu expulsif, or animal” to expel the venom from the “natural” means that Arcite was unable to cough. He bases this theory on the statement of Gilbertus Anglicus that the cough is “a movement resulting from the combined action of the virtus animalis and the virtus naturalis. (See Curry, Walter Clyde: Chaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences [New York, 1926], pp. 142 ff.) If Professor Curry is right, it is still probable that Chaucer derived his information from Vincent, who presents the same theory of the cough. (See Speculum Doctrinale xv, cap. lxxxiii, ”De Passionibus Pulmonis & primo de Tussi.“) Since, however, Chaucer makes no reference whatever to coughing, Mr. Curry's explanation of the lines seems unnecessarily circuitous. It was gross blood, not phlegm, which had to be expelled from Arcite's breast if he was to live. It is undoubtedly true that in the later stages of his malady he could not cough, but he suffered from an even more serious disability. He could not breathe deeply or regularly enough to purify his blood of the noxious fumes which were constantly adding to his infection.

21 Sp. Doc. xv, cap. lxxix, “De Passionibus Membrorum Anhelitus & primo de Gurgulione.”

22 Ibid., xiii, cap. xciv, “De Modo Attrahendi Humores.”

23 Ibid., xv, cap. iii, “De Horis Febrium.”

24 Ibid., xiii, cap. xxxviii, “De Preparatione Corporis ad Humorum Purgationem.”

25 Ibid., xv, cap. lxxxix, “De Passionibus Cordis & primo de Cordiaca.”

26 Ibid.

27 See Pedanii Dioscoridis Anazarbei De Materia Medica, ed. Sprengel, in Medicorum Graecorum Opera quae Exstant, ed. Kuhn, Lipsiae, 1829–30; Œuvres de Rufus d'Ephèse, ed. Daremberg and Ruelle, Paris, 1879; Magni Hippocratis medicorum omnium facile principis Opera Omnia quae Exstant, apud Andrae Wecheli heredes, Francofurti, 1505; Haly Abbas (Ali ibn L-Abbas), Liber Medicinae dictus Regalis, Bernardinus Rizus, Venice, 1492; Claudi Galeni Opera Omnia, in Medicorum Graecorum Opera quae Exstant, ed. Kühn, Lipsiae, 1829; Liber Serapionis Aggregatus in Medicinis Simplicibus, Reynaldus de Novimagio, Venice, 1479; Breviarium Joannis filii Serapionis medici, Reynaldus Novimagensis, Venice, 1479; Rhazes (Abu Bekr Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi), Liber ad Almansorem, bound with other tracts, including the Libri Divisionum, Bonetus Locatellus, Venice, 1479; Avicennae Canonis Libri v and De Viribus Cordis, Petrus Maufer et socii, Venice, 1486; Averrois Cordubensis Colliget and Collectaneorum de Re Medica, in X Volumen Aristotelis, Venetiis apud Iuntas, 1503; Maimonides, Aphorismi Medici (containing Janus Damascenus' Aphorismi and Rhazes' Liber de Secretis in Medicina), Bologna, 1489; Summi in Omni Philosophia Viri Constantini Africani, apud Henricum Petrum, Basileae, 1539; Bernardus de Gordonio, Lilium Medicinae, per Anthonium Lambillionis & Marinum Sarraceni, Lugduni, 1491; John of Gaddesden, Rosa Anglica, Joannes Antonius Birreta, Papia, 1492; and Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendium Medicine, Jacobum Saccon, Lugduni, 1510.