The Imaginary Invalid

D n m iw g Fo te s “Take three enemas and call me in the morning.”Funny? Disgusting? Perhaps both. But during Moliere’s lifetime, purges such as enemas were as common in France as aspirin is today. Electors agreed on three methods of purging —bleeding, laxatives, and enemas —and declared that almost any illness could be cured by these treatments. Regular’applications of enemas and purging mixtures were thought to promote robust health, even if they chained one to the chamber pot for the evening. An enema works from the bottom up and down again. A purging mixture is drunk like a laxative, stimulating a “thorough cleansing.”Both practices were exceedingly popular’during the reign of Louis XIV, who reportedly received more than 2,000 enemas during his lifetime. Moliere dealt with these “personal” medical practices with humor; even though he himself was caught in a losing battle with tuberculosis. The prescriptions that he gave his imaginary invalid, Argan, would be common remedies for his own all-too-real illness. Moliere knew that his death was imminent, yet he faced the frightening prospect with humor; satirizing the ineffective “cures”of the “learned”doctors whose education qualified them more to debate random and seemingly unimportant topics than to cure their patients. Their ignorance of actual medicine notwithstanding, the doctors were greatly respected by the Parisians, and their prescriptions were followed even by the king. Moliere died shortly following his fourth performance as Argan, the hypochondriac, in The Imaginaryhivalid Christa Funke, Dramaturg The dramaturghas alsoprepared a study and discussion guide, Play on Words, which is available to all audiencemembers at no cost at the concession stand Play on Words is funded byAlpha Psi Omega, the Cedarville University chapter of the national honorary theatre organization.