Thomsen and myotonia congenita.

Virgin's role in the story is that of a mother who uses medicine to treat her child,28 her selection of a remedy recommended by the most prominent medical authorities could scarcely have been more appropriate. The cure would still have been considered a miracle, although based on medical principles. Moreover, by using this device, Chaucer would have appealed to the intellectual capacities of his audience, and thus would have attracted new interest into his retelling of a familiar legend. In any event, an alternative answer to the problem posed by Chaucer's use of the word grain may be found in medieval medical writings. A scholarly consensus reregarding the meaning of this object may never be achieved, and it has even been proposed that Chaucer made his references to the grain intentionally vague in order to accomplish diverse literary and aesthetic goals.29 Whatever his purpose, the ambiguity of this term has resulted in the study of materials hitherto ignored. Therefore, it may be hoped that the grain and other puzzling elements in Chaucer's works, like the perturbations of a known planet, will continue luring scholars to explore the unknown.