This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Humanities  • History of Medicine  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Lynne Lamberg

JAMA. 2004;292:2455-2456.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Yearning for a longer tail, a donkey consults an eminent physician. "I’m sorry," the physician says. "I know of no remedy for that problem." He refers the donkey to a renowned medical center in Italy for a second opinion.

Although this tale of a tail may bring to mind a persistent topic of e-mail spam, it originated around 1180 CE. The physician in the story is Galen, an iconic figure nearly 8 centuries after his death. The donkey, Brunellus, proves an astute observer of foibles of students, monks, and others he encounters in his futile search for a cure. The author, Nigel Wireker, was himself a monk at Canterbury.

Wireker’s satire, called Speculum Stultorum, or Mirror of Fools, enjoyed great popularity. Chaucer mentioned it in the Canterbury Tales. After Johannes Gutenberg devised movable metal type, publishing his first book, a Latin Bible, around 1455, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?