Falstaff, Kittredge, and Galen

FALSTAFF, KITTREDGE, AND GALEN SAUL JARCHO* Every man's performances, to be rightly estimated, must be compared with the state of the age in which he lived, and with his own particular opportunities .—Samuel Johnson, 1765 I On a winter day early in 1924, on the lecture platform of a room in Harvard Hall at Harvard College, the famous and formidable Professor George Lyman Kittredge was conducting his class in Shakespeare, known as English 2. The subject was act II, scene I oí Henry V, a rambunctious scene involving Corporal Nym, Lieutenant Bardolph, Ancient Pistol, and the Hostess, née Mistress Quickly. The lady was urging her ruffian friends to visit SirJohn Falstaff, who was dangerously ill—"he is so shaked of a burning quotidian tertian, that it is most lamentable to behold." Like almost all of my classmates, I noted Kittredge's exegesis on a sheet of onionskin paper, which I pasted into the standard textbook, a raspberry-red volume measuring 43? by 63? inches and titled Shakespeare 's History ofKing Henry the Fifth (edited by William J. Rolfe).1 According to my notes, recorded in the classroom, Professor Kittredge said: "Quotidian tertian [is a] malaprop[ism] for an ague fit." He explained that "quotidian" meant daily attacks and "tertian" meant attacks every other day (of the fever that is now called malaria) and that the woman had committed an "absurd malapropism." Such was Kittredge's overpowering force tbit, although I wrote down *Address: 11 West 69 Street, New York, New York 10023. The full inscription on the title page is not devoid of significance. It reads: "Shakespeare 's/ History of/ King Henry the Fifth/ Edited, with Notes,/ By/ William J. Rolfe, Litt. D.,/ Formerly Head Master of the High School, Cambridge, Mass./ With Engravings.; New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, American Book Company." The reverse of the title page records copyrights dated 1877, 1898, 1905, and 1918.© 1987 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 003 1 -5982/87/3002-052510 1 .00 Perspectives in Biohgy and Medicine, 30, 2 ¦ Winter 1987 \ 197 his remarks as well as I could, I never bothered—until this week—to read William J. Rolfe's editorial comments, which appear at the back of the textbook (p. 155): "Quotidian tertian. The damejumbles together the quotidian fever, the paroxysms of which recurred daily, and the tertian, in which the period was three days." Clearly Rolfe and Kittredge were in close agreement. Recently some studies of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian medicine led to examination of 20 unpublished clinical consultations that are at the famous Biblioteca Estense at Modena, in Italy. These documents were written circa 1650 by Dr. Antonio Frassoni (16071680 ).2 Consilium number 16,3 folios 107r-119v, bears the following long title: Pro quadam Ill[ustrissi]ma muliere laborante duabus tertianis, et quotidiana intermittentibus cum syncopis rudimento. . . . This translates as follows: "For a certain highly respected woman suffering from a double tertian and a quotidian intermittent with traces of faintness . . . ." In his discussion Frassoni, a confirmed Galenist, quotes his hero repeatedly and reaches the following conclusion (fol. 109r): "This fever is a true semitertian, since a true and typical semitertian consists of a tertian continuous and a quotidian intermittent ... so that it is a continued fever and also intermits." On the next folio (11Or) he adds: "I must conclude that this highly esteemed woman suffers from a mixed or complicated fever made up of an intermittent quotidian and two false tertians that are also intermittent." Such being the statements of Frassoni, who took the great risk of disagreeing with Kittredge, it became inevitable that I find out what Galen thought: "A semitertian (hemitritaios) is what I, in accord with the opinion of Hippocrates in Epidemics 1, call a continued fever which does not wholly intermit, but causes one milder day or night and another that is worse."4 Having established that Mistress Quickly, with all her malapropisms, was not necessarily or invariably a fool and was not in total confusion as to the opinions ofher own and earlier centuries, we may note in addition that the OxfordEnglish Dictionary records seventeenth-century uses of the word "hemitritaean," marked with a dagger to indicate...