In Gargantua’s education, the care of the body is of remarkable importance. The article places these exercises, as well as the prescriptions and the discipline which accompany them, in the domain of the medical knowledge of their time. Dietetics occupies a position in the foreground, and a close reading shows that the diet of the young giant must adapt to his “natural complexion,” that of a “phlegmatic”- a term that should be understood in a specifically humoral sense.
