Chapter XXI (3)

Practical instruction was much more meagre than the oral, but this is hardly to be imputed as a fault. Anatomy cannot be learned except by dissection, and no bodies but those of criminals were procurable. The faculty had to look to crime to help on its progress in this study. When an execution took place, the dean received formal notice, and convoked the doctors and students on the occasion "to make an anatomy," as it was called. When the faculty was at peace with the surgeons, the latter were favored with an invitation. By a strange prejudice, theory and practice, as we have noticed, were kept distinct. The learned professor would have demeaned himself by becoming an operator, while the acting surgeon was condemned to be a mere intelligent machine, and was formally interdicted from being initiated in the higher mysteries of the profession. It was a barber who generally filled this inferior office, and he not unfrequently would display more knowledge than his masters; for which {501} offense he was sure to be severely reprimanded. "_Doctor non sinat dissectorem divagari, sed contineat in officio dissecandi_"--"Let not the doctor suffer the dissector to stray beyond his province, but keep him to his duty of dissecting." This is one of the rules laid down in the statutes. He was to work on and hold his tongue. But not only was the barber condemned to silence--a hard sentence, some will say, on one of his loquacious profession--but he was to receive no pay. For remuneration he was to look to his brethren of the razor. There were more facilities for the study of botany than for any other practical branch of the medical science. Beside the garden in the Rue de la Bûcherie, the doctors had afterward the use of the Jardin Royal founded by Richelieu; and these advantages do not seem to have been by any means neglected. Clinical instruction was peculiarly defective. Absorbed by erudition, philosophy, and the interminable disquisitions of the schools, our medical forefathers seem to have forgotten that experimental knowledge can be obtained only by the bedside of the sick. Most of the students had never seen a single patient before they reached the honors of the baccalaureate. After this they attached themselves to some doctor, whom they followed on his rounds, in order to learn the application of what they had theoretically mastered, and were by him introduced to his clients, much as was the practice in the days of ancient Rome. The poor sufferer's room was thus not unfrequently turned into a pedantic lecture-hall. We instinctively recall to mind Molière's two Diafoiruses, father and son, stationing themselves each on one side of the unhappy patient, and discoursing in pompous medical phraseology of the character of his pulse and of the humors of his body. [Footnote 71] The practical and, as such, the most important department of medical science received, it must be confessed, the least attention. All the prizes, whether of honor or emolument, which the future held out, tended to concentrate zeal and emulation on dialectics. It seemed as if the medical art were designed for the benefit of the doctors rather than the doctored, and that it was of more importance to be able to descant learnedly upon a malady than to cure it. To figure advantageously at one of those solemn public sittings of the medical body, which were often graced with the presence of members of the high aristocracy and of the magisterial body; to be able to deliver a brilliant harangue, and confound an opponent by a well-timed and well-chosen quotation--such was the highest ambition of the student. To preside with distinction over the discussion of a thesis--such was the battle-field on which the doctor hoped to win his laurels. If he acquitted himself with applause, he had gained a victory which raised him higher in his own esteem, and in that of the world at large, than the most successful practice of his profession could possibly do. The first two articles of the statutes contain this spirit in a condensed form, and may be regarded as the abridged decalogue of the faculty, summing up their duty toward God and toward man: 1. the divine offices shall be celebrated with the customary forms, and in the usual places, at the same hours and on the same days as heretofore; 2. the medical students shall frequently attend public disputations and dissertations.

[Footnote 71: "_Duriuscule repoussant, et même un peu capricant."
"L'intempérie de son parenchyme splénique et l'état de ses méats
cholidoques_."]

The process through which the student had to pass in order to make his way to his degree of licentiate was a trying ordeal. The examination for the bachelor's degree, after a few previous solemnities, including the usual attention first to religion, next to dress and formal state, lasted a week, during which the candidate might be questioned not only by the regular examiners on the usual round of the natural, the non-natural, and the unnatural, but by any doctor present, each having the right to propose a certain number of questions. In conclusion, the aspirant {502} had to comment on some aphorism of Hippocrates. When the examiners gave in their report, votes were taken, and a favorable majority, secured to the aspirant his degree. The new bachelors swore to keep the honorable secrets, and observe all the practices, customs, and statutes of the faculty; to pay homage to the dean and to all the masters; to aid the faculty against all opponents and all illicit practitioners, and to submit to the punishments which it might inflict; to assist in gown at all the masses ordered by the faculty, coming in at least before the epistle, and remaining till the end; and, finally, to assist at all the academic exercises and disputations of the schools during two years, where they were to maintain some theses on medicine or hygiene, observing good order and decorum in conducting their argument.

Their great ordeal was now to come. One is amazed to read of the succession of tilts they had to run in the intellectual tourney of these two probationary years; how from St. Martin to the Carnival they had to maintain, always in full dress and before a large assembly, their _quodlibetary_ [Footnote 72] theses of physiology or medicine; how from Ash-Wednesday to vacation time it was the turn of the Cardinal theses, so called from their institution by Cardinal d'Estoutteville. These chiefly related to hygienic questions. It is from among these latter that most of those puerile and absurd queries have been extracted which have drawn down so much ridicule on the faculty. It is scarcely possible to imagine that such questions as the following can have been intended for serious discussion: Are heroes the children of heroes? Are they bilious? Is it good to get drunk once a month? Is woman an imperfect work of nature? Is sneezing a natural act? It is only fair, however, to remember that by far the greater number of the subjects proposed were of a very different character, and such as might profitably be considered at the present day. But if the frequent occurrence of these intellectual jousts was trying to the combatant, their interminable length was perfectly appalling. From six o'clock to eight he had to stand a preliminary skirmish with the bachelors. For the next three hours he had to encounter nine doctors, who successively entered the lists, each bringing his fresh vigor to bear on the exhausted candidate. The sitting ended with a general assault, in which all present had liberty to take a share and overwhelm the poor bachelor with a very hail-storm of interrogatories, to which he had to reply single-handed. During the Cardinal theses the debate was still hotter and more prolonged. From five in the morning till midday, the candidate was plied with questions by the bachelors, all ready to pounce upon him at the slightest flaw in his argument or the merest slip of his tongue. As a climax of cruelty, during the _quodlibetary_ examinations he was bound to furnish his persecutors with refreshment in an adjoining apartment, of which he alone was forbidden to partake. The sound of the great clock striking twelve must have been a joyful reprieve to the athlete in the ring; the wonder is that any constitution could stand the probationary two years during which this process was energetically kept up.

[Footnote 72: So called because selected at pleasure.]

At the close of this period the candidates were subjected to private examination before the doctors, in order to ascertain their practical capacity and personal qualifications for exercising the medical art. Great strictness prevailed on all points which nearly concerned the honor and interests of the faculty; and if the candidate had ever practiced any manual art, including surgery, he was bound on oath to renounce it for the future. Then followed a separate private examination by each individual doctor as to a thousand personal details affecting the competence of the applicant. A secret scrutiny then decided on the admissibility, not as yet the admission, of {503} the candidates to the honors and privileges of actual members of the faculty. The spirit of the old days was preserved even in the seventeenth century, and the licentiates had to receive ecclesiastical sanction and a quasi-ordination. They proceeded accordingly in procession to the house of the chancellor of the academy, to whom they were presented by the dean, who, on their request, fixed a day for their reception. This form was one of the most cherished traditions of the university. Gallican as was the spirit of that body, it gloried in tracing its privileges and constitution to the Holy See; a cheap homage, which entailed no inconvenience, and of which at times it knew how to avail itself in its contests with the king and the parliament. The chancellor, who was a canon of the metropolitan see of Paris, had long enjoyed sovereign jurisdiction over the schools; and although in the seventeenth century his power was purely nominal, no one disputed his right upon this occasion to represent the sovereign Pontiff, the supreme teacher of the Catholic world. Other curious ceremonies attended the solemn admittal to the licentiate. All the high functionaries of state, and other important personages, were invited to attend the schools on an appointed day, in order to learn from the paranymph the names and titles of the medical practitioners whom the faculty were about to present to the city--nay, to the whole world: "_Quos, quales, et quot medicos urbi, alque adeo universo orbi, medicorum collegium isto biennio sit suppeditaturum._" The paranymph, as is well known, was, among the Greeks, the friend of the bridegroom, who accompanied him in his chariot when he went to fetch home the bride. Now it was held that the new licentiate was about to espouse the faculty, much as the Doge of Venice married the sea. The friend of the spouse, the paranymph, was in fact the dean, who presented the young spouses to the chancellor with a complimentary address. That dignitary invited the assembly to repair on a fixed day to the great archiepiscopal hall, which upon this occasion was thrown open to all the notabilities of the capital, who attended to add honor to the solemnity. Then the list of the candidates was read out in their order of merit, as previously decided after a strict inquiry by the doctors. They immediately fell on their knees, bareheaded, in an attitude of deep recollection, to receive the apostolic benediction given by the chancellor in these terms: "_Auctoritate Sanctae Sedis Apostolicae, qua fungor in hoc parte, do tibi licentium legendi, interpretandi, et faciendi medicinam hic et ubique terrarum, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti_." A question was then proposed by this dignitary to the licentiate first in the order of merit, who was bound to give proof of his competency by solving it on the spot. As the chancellor was not a doctor, and as the assembly was miscellaneous, this query was usually religious or literary, and, to judge from the recorded questions, rather curious and subtle than profitable. The whole assembly forthwith repaired in a body to the cathedral to thank our Blessed Lady for the happy conclusion of a work begun under her auspices. With his hand stretched over the altar of the martyrs, the chancellor murmured a short prayer, the purport of which was calculated to remind the newly-elected that, belonging henceforth as they did specially to the Church, they ought to be prepared to sacrifice themselves in all things, even to their very life: _usque ad effusionem sanguinis_. It depended entirely upon the licentiates themselves whether or no they were ultimately decorated with the doctor's cap, which conferred the full privileges at once of the medical corporation and of the university to which it belonged; and although a few, from modesty or other causes, declined to aim at this honor, with by far the greater number it was the consequence and complement of the licentiate. The degree of licentiate introduced the recipient to the public; {504} that of doctor admitted him into the very sanctuary of the faculty. Accordingly it was conferred, not less ceremoniously, but more privately. It was, so to say, a family affair. Although, as we have said, there was no further examination respecting medical competency, another minute inquiry was made into the life and morals of the applicant, which was followed, if the scrutiny proved satisfactory, by a preparatory act called the Vesperie, because it took place in the afternoon. At this sitting, the president addressed the candidate in a solemn discourse, intended to impress him with a high sense of the dignity of the healing art, and of the maxims of honor and probity which ought to guide its professors. The ordeal of questions was not altogether closed; for we find the president proposing a query, and entering into a discussion with the candidate, who had thus still something to undergo before he passed on from the class of the questioned to the more enviable rank of the questioners.

Upon the great day, the doctor in _posse_, preceded by the mace-bearers and bachelors, with the president on his left, and followed by the doctors _in esse_ selected to argue with him, proceeded to the hall of the great school. The grand apparitor then addressed him thus: "Sir candidate for the doctorate, before you are initiated, you have to take three oaths,"--"_Domine doctorande, antequam incipias, habes tria juramenta_." The three oaths were: 1. to observe the rights, statutes, laws, and venerable customs of the faculty; 2. to assist the day following the feast of St. Luke at the mass for deceased doctors; 3. to combat with all his strength against the illicit practitioners of medicine, whatever might be their rank or their condition in life. "Will you swear to observe these things?"--"_Vis ista jurare?_"--asked the grand apparitor; and the candidate replied with that memorable _Juro_ ("I swear") which was Molière's last word. [Footnote 73] The president, after a brief address, turned toward him with the doctorial square cap in his hand, and making with it the sign of the cross in the air, placed it on the head of the candidate, to which he then administered a slight blow with two of his fingers, and forthwith bestowed upon him the _accolade_. The recipient was now duly dubbed doctor. He made immediate use of his new powers by asking a question of one of the doctors present. The president had then a tilt with the doctor who had presided at the Vesperie, and the sitting was closed by the new doctor's delivering a discourse of thanksgiving to God, to the faculty, and to his friends and relations present. The statutes enjoin that this speech should be _elegant_. We may conceive that the notion of elegance entertained by the faculty differed considerably from that which the word suggests to our minds. On the St. Martin's Day following the recently-chosen doctor did the honors of his new grade by presiding over a _quodlibetary_ thesis. This was a sort of bye-day, being out of course. It was called the "_acte pastillaire_," in allusion probably to the sugary wafers presented to the dean stamped with his likeness, or to the _bonbons_, of which there was a general distribution on the occasion. The next day the new doctor was entered on the registers, and took his place on the junior bench for ten years.

[Footnote 73: The great comic dramatist played the part of Argan on
the first representation of his play of the _Malade Imaginaire_, now
always performed on the anniversary of his death. He had probably
long had within him the seeds of a mortal complaint; and after
pronouncing the word _Juro_ in his character of Bachelor of Medicine
taking his degree, which is the object of the famous ceremonial
ballet succeeding the comedy, he was seized with a suffocating
attack, and left the playhouse only to expire shortly afterward.]

Every one must be struck with the close resemblance which the famous ceremony in Molière's _Malade Imaginaire_ bears to those scholastic solemnities. Who, indeed, would now remember these antiquated customs of an age from which we are drifting more rapidly in habits of thought and {505} in manners than even the stream of time is carrying us, if the comic dramatist had not conferred upon them the immortality of ridicule? Yet it may well be questioned if it were not for Molière's ludicrous picture, from which we have formed our notions and judgment of the old faculty, whether, did we now for the first time discover in some old forgotten document the record of these proceedings, our impression might not be widely different; whether we might not see as much in them to command our respect as to provoke us to laughter. Old-fashioned ways--that is, ways which no longer reflect the ideas and feelings of the day--always lend themselves specially to ridicule. In Molière's time society was beginning to divest itself of its mediaeval garb, and men's minds were being formed, not always to their advantage, on a new type. The old type, however, was so strongly impressed on the medical corporation--in which the traditionary spirit was peculiarly powerful--that the garb, which, as we know, follows rather than precedes a change, still sat naturally on the venerable body of doctors. So entirely was this the case, that where, as individuals, they were more or less under the influence of the Spirit of the day, in their professional capacity they had as it were a second self, clinging tenaciously in all that concerned the faculty to ancient ideas and forms. Of this combination the well-known Guy Patin, to whom we may hereafter have occasion to allude, was a curious example. It is difficult to look upon men performing acts, to them most serious, however absurd in our eyes, as purely ridiculous. Assuredly they have their respectable side. Neither is it easy to believe that all these good doctors, indefatigable as we have seen them, and enthusiastically devoted as they were to their calling, were all such pedantic idiots as Molière has painted them. It is a well-known fact that the inimitable piece of buffoonery to which we have alluded was concocted in the salon of Madame de la Sablière, a noted rendezvous of the "_beaux esprits_" of the day. Molière furnished the canvas and laid-in the colors of the first painting; but his witty friends had each some lively touch to contribute. It is probable that two or three of the medical profession--men who were more or less sceptical as to the perfection of every saying and doing of the faculty, and with whom Molière is known to have lived in habits of intimacy--were present at these meetings, and supplied many of the technical expressions. It does not follow that these physicians were actuated by any spite against their order, any more than Cervantes hated chivalry, to which, while quizzing its eccentricities and exaggerations, he unwittingly gave a fatal blow.

One remark forcibly suggests itself, when we consider the hyperbolical praise which the medical body so liberally administered to itself, and with which Molière has made us familiar in passages of his comedies which can scarcely be considered as caricatures. We are apt severely to censure as grossly servile and almost idolatrous the flattery with which the men of letters and courtiers of Louis XIV.'s reign dosed the monarch. But some abatement must be made of this harsh judgment when we find the reception of an obscure bachelor to his degree made the occasion of a prodigal expenditure of the most exaggerated metaphors. He is a new star, a pharos destined to shed its light on the latest posterity; he is the compendium of all virtue, talent, and glory; he equals, if he does not surpass, all the heroes of antiquity. And if such were the eulogies bestowed on a successful candidate for the honors of the faculty, what was the laudation reserved for the faculty itself, the source of all this splendor? Hyperbole went mad. We find, for instance, an orator taking as his text, "The physician is like to God." He sets forth this resemblance in the attributes of power, beneficence, mercy: physicians are {506} the ministers and the "colleagues" of God. But this is not enough. The orator kindles as he proceeds: all comes from God; _ergo_, evil as well as good. "But from you, medical gentlemen," he exclaims, "comes nothing but good. Doubtless God is just in afflicting us, and has his reasons. But still evil is evil, and medicine is always salutary." (Rather a bold assertion!) The conclusion is, that we should owe more to the physician than to God, seeing that, while the Lord wounds, the physician heals, did we not after all owe to him the physician himself.

One lost trait to complete this sketch of the old customs of the faculty. Molière has hinted at it in the closing line of the exordium of his comic president:

"Salus, honos, et argentum,
_Atque bonum appetitum_."

The culinary and gastronomic side of the medical physiognomy is not the least curious. Brillat-Savarin, who has made a classified catalogue of gourmands, places physicians under the head of gourmands by virtue of their profession. It is, he says, in the nature of things. Everything contributes to make them gluttons. The hopes and the gratitude of patients combine to pamper them. They are crammed like pigeons, and at the end of six months have become irretrievable gourmands. There seem to be reasonable grounds for this accusation. In what may be called the heroic age of the faculty--the palmy days of medical ceremonial, which had already begun to decline in Molière's time, although the ancient forms were in the main preserved--corporation repasts were frequent. After every examination the doctors dined; after every thesis they dined--on this latter occasion at the expense of the successful candidate. On St. Luke's Day they dined; and again when the accounts were given in, and when a dean was elected. When a chair of botany was erected; a "botanic banquet" ensued as a matter of course. But it would be too tedious to enumerate all these feastings, since almost everything furnished the pretext for an entertainment. At one time, the faculty even officially appointed two of their number to taste the wines before their repasts. Under the pretence of hygienic considerations, questions appertaining to what may be styled transcendental cookery were of frequent occurrence; and it was gravely debated whether salad ought to be eaten at the first course, and potatoes at the second; whether it were good to eat nuts after fish, cheese after meat, etc.

We will conclude with some reflections of a more pleasing character as to the spirit which animated the old faculty. Some of its statutes are memorials of the virtuous principles which, in spite of all absurdities of form, were held in honor by their body. For instance, the doctors were enjoined to cultivate friendship with one another. They were never to visit a patient without an express invitation. The juniors were always to rise before the ancients, and the ancients were to protect the juniors, and treat them with kindness. The secrets of the sick were sacred; and no one was to reveal what he had seen, heard, or so much as suspected in a patient's house. Gravity, mildness, and decorum were to reign in their assemblies, where each was to speak in his proper order and without interrupting others. Disorderly behavior, recriminations, and abusive language are to be banished for ever from the faculty. These regulations are admirable; and at any rate bear witness to the sound views of the body of whose collective wisdom they were the expression. Indeed the great strength of the faculty resided in its attachment to its salutary moral laws. Mere formalism would never have possessed such vitality and endurance. When we penetrate into the life of this old society, we meet with a tone of genuine uprightness, manliness, and candor quite refreshing to the mind. We may add that {507} most of the great liberal professions--the bar, the magistracy, and the educational bodies of the seventeenth century--make the same favorable impression upon us. They exhibit the _bourgeoisie_ of the day in a respectable light, as manifesting in no ordinary degree the qualities of probity, disinterestedness, and the family spirit, with all the sober virtues and homely charities which appertain to it.

We naturally know less of the life of the students; but it was probably moulded upon that of their elders and superiors. Even Molière's pompous Thomas Diafoirus, with whose rejection by Angélique for the handsome, rich, and agreeable Cléante the reader of course heartily sympathizes, is by no means a contemptible personage; and when divested of his priggish solemnity, and of all those ludicrous accidental qualities which go to make up the caricature, it cannot be denied that he is a well-principled, sober, and industrious youth. It is, therefore, no unreasonable conclusion to draw, that such was the general character of the body of aspirants to the honors of the venerable doctorate.

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From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.