Like Don Quixote, Till Eulenspiegel is a literary character who has never ceased to entertain generations of readers. He was first featured in medieval stories in which he ridiculed the foolishness and hypocrisy of the wealthy nobles, clergy, merchants, and in particular the impostor physicians and quacks. He is believed to have been born around the year 1300, to have lived as a vagrant in Germany, Bohemia, the Netherlands, and Italy, and to have spent his time playing pranks on the oppressors of the common folk.

The stories of Till appeared when Europe was recovering from the devastating Black Death pandemic that had killed an estimated one-third of its population. Medical knowledge was primitive, and confidence in physicians’ abilities was low. Medicine was still practiced according to the Galenic philosophy, which posited that health was due to the balance between the four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile). Practitioners prescribed treatments of questionable efficacy, including bloodletting, purging, and herbal concoctions. Till’s stories often focus on incompetent doctors and dishonest quacks, whom he depicts or impersonates by making absurd claims, such as claiming to be able to cure every disease. He manages to empty an overcrowded hospital for a fee by having patients laugh so much that they forget being ill, by making them so uncomfortable that they decide to leave anyway, or frightening them by telling them that one of them will be burned and made into a paste to treat the others.  He prescribes useless remedies and disappears before he is apprehended. He writes a prescription to be taken three times a day and cuts the parchment into small pieces which he takes with water three times a day and thus can claim to have been cured by his prescription.

Till Eulenspiegel reportedly died around 1350, possibly from the plague, leaving posterity in doubt as to what is fact and what is fiction. His composite name in German means owl and mirror, reflecting the wisdom of the bird and the use of the mirror to look at society. He played pranks on authority figures, corrupt individuals, and pretentious academics, earning popularity among ordinary people. A book about him was first published around 1512 in Strasbourg. The tales may have struck a particular chord with the peasants and lower classes by their lack of refinement, such as the frequent mention of body parts and excreta, particularly about defecating in inappropriate places. The more recent popularity of his works is attributable to the 1894 tone poem “The Pranks of Eulenspiegel” by Richard Strauss, which is regularly played in the concert halls of America and Europe. The stories are somewhat old-fashioned but are fun and worth looking at.