The Summoner's Occupational Disease.

Author / Editor
Garbáty, Thomas J.

Title
The Summoner's Occupational Disease.

Published
Medical History 7 (1963): 348-58.

Description
Adduces medieval and modern medicine to argue that the Summoner's disease described in GP 1.623-66 can best be diagnosed as "a rosacea-like secondary syphiloderm with meningeal neurosyphilitic involvement, with chronic alcoholism playing an important part." The medieval audience would have associated the symptoms of this venereal disease with lechery and leprosy, ironic in a man who was commissioned to oppose sexual sins.

Chaucer Subjects
Summoner and His Tale