1847] Guy Patin's Letters. 179 the best theses he could meet with, and his letters are constantly referring to the means of procuring these and other new publications, which it would seem were at that period more often printed in Holland and England than in France, a rigid censorship of the press being maintained by the Jesuits in this last country. The lovingness and respect with which he speaks of his favourite writers, and his anxiety for new productions from the pens of those still alive, have something even affecting in them. Never is Patin so happy as when in his study, dipping into his Galen or Virgil, or devouring the last new work of Riolan or Salmasius; and the ire which the bold practice of some "stibial" doctor, or the pretensions of some unfortunate chirurgeon had recently excited is exchanged for the enjoyment and grateful expressions of the literary enthusiast. "My little library," he exclaims, "is the light of my eyes and the solace of my labours." "I hold myself to be happier there with my books and a little leisure, than is Mazarin with all his riches and his cares." His range of reading was large, embracing the whole field of the belles-lettres, perusal of works relating to which he termed his debaucheries, as compared with the sterner reading of the medical classics he so much admired. Although a severe censurer of the conduct of the great, and manifesting on many occasions very democratic opinions, Patin was always a loyal subject, and put great faith in the good disposition of the young king proving a corrective for the evils of the state. The decapitation of Charles I. by the English seems much to have startled him, and he always speaks of us as a very ferocious people, as we were doubtless considered in those days on the Continent, traces of such feeling even yet remaining there. He the more cordially disliked us from the fact of one of his most favourite writers and intimate friend, Salmasius, having written so forcibly in condemnation of the proceedings of Cromwell and his followers. "As for the English, if you except a small number of honest persons, I wish them as much harm as they have done to their king. It is a haughty, proud, and malignant nation, 'quæque Taтpozagadorov habet odisse Gallos,' as Scaliger somewhere says in his beautiful letters. The English * * are crudeles et feroces. Theodore Macille said they were a species of man de genere lupino; as the Spaniards and Italians were of the nature of the fox, callidi, versipelles et astuti. The Jesuits are hermaphrodite, wicked as the English, and cunning as the Italians. The Queen of England arrived to-day at Calais, where her son the Duke of York came to meet her. The executions are going on in London, where there have been already ten hung. The last were two colonels, who were ordered by the Parliament to see execution done on the late King. All these criminals are strange people, who will repent nothing either of the fact or the death. They are martyrs of the State and of the times. It seems to me they are quite infatuated. I think this only occurs in that nation which seems to differ from all others. They are so cruel, ferocious, and blood-thirsty, as to be nearly fatuous." It may be believed that one so jealous of the dignity and privileges of the Faculty as Patin was not indifferent to the highest honours it had in its gift; and accordingly we find him frequently alluding to his two successive elections as Dean of the body with evident satisfaction; although, by reason of the dissensions excited among its members by the advocacy of the claims of antimony, matters did not always run so smooth as might be desired. In fact, the Dean, as M. Parise observes, was a dictator at " * N the head of a republic difficult enough to govern." The following is Patin's description of his functions, and the somewhat complex mode of election. "He is master of the bachelors, and regulates the discipline of the schools. He keeps our registries, which are 200 years old, as well as the seals of the Faculty. He receives our revenue, and renders us an account of it. Every thesis requires his signature and approbation. He arranges the order of precedence of the doctors, and assembles the Faculty only when he pleases. He, with the four examiners, conducts rigorous examinations, which last for a week, and he is one of the three deans of the University. It is a laborious office, one of much honour, but harassing in its duties. He conducts the actions brought by the Faculty, and even pleads before the Advocate-general. It is a very honorable but a most laborious charge, which a worthy man ought to feel very happy in escaping, satisfied in being thought worthy of filling it by being elected to it. This is the mode of the election. All the Faculty being present, the Dean who is going out of office thanks the company for the honour they have done him, and desires they will elect another in his place. The names of all the doctors present are written on so many tickets and laid on the table. The first half of these are taken and placed in a hat, and are called the great bench. We are now 112 in number, so that the first 56 are placed in the hat. When these tickets have been well shaken by the oldest of our company, who is M. Riolan, the Dean quitting office draws three names one after the other, and draws two others from the little bench. None of these five doctors can be the Dean on that day, but they are the electors, who, after having taken an oath of fidelity, are shut up in the chapel, where they choose the names of three of the assembled doctors whom they believe worthy of the office, two from the great bench and one from the little one. These names are put in the hat by the senior doctor, and the Dean, placing therein his hand wide open, draws one who is to be the future Dean. I have been several times an elector, and have even been placed in the hat three times, and have remained there, and I shall not be sorry to do so whenever I am put there, for I have no leisure for such a charge sortes in urnam mittuntur, sed temperantur a Domino. All these ceremonies are very ancient, and are religiously observed out of respect to their antiquity." Patin, however, at last attained the honor, and his active disposition found time to creditably fulfil the duties, some of which, such as presiding at the humiliating admission of the surgeons and apothecaries, pursuing illegitimate practitioners, and holding disputations on the theses, were eminently congenial to his tastes. The disputation of the theses was one especially so; and he constantly refers in his letter to the collection of those he and his friends are making, negotiating exchanges, purchases, &c., or liberally presenting them. "I can give you several," he says in one letter, "seeing I have always collected as many as possible, so that I have here more than 700 in good order, besides a great number of duplicates." Some of these productions were of great merit, and had a large circulation, but even some of the most approved in that scholastic and disputatious period would seem oftentimes insignificant to our more practical age. But, although the authority of the ancients and the schools was still predominant and indisputable in the Faculty, the means of correcting their errors were already in operation: for not only had the propriety of administering the various new remedies, cinchona, antimony, mercury, and opium, been admitted by a majority of the doctors; but the study of human anatomy was pursued with zeal, though not with much regularity. Patin in his letters repeatedly gives us accounts of the post 1847] Guy Patin's Letters. 181 mortem examinations he had been present at; and frequently interrupted his courses of lectures in order that his pupils might have the opportunity of witnessing the dissection of criminals-opportunities, indeed, from the dreadful frequency with which capital punishment was at that period inflicted, of no uncommon occurrence. A curious and somewhat undignified custom prevailed with the Faculty, by which all the candidates, received or rejected, were required to provide a handsome entertainment for their examiners and a number of the Faculty besides. We formed three tables, at each of which were from twelve to thirteen of us. I never saw such rejoicing, such laughter, and such good cheer." Imagine the rejected of the College of Physicians or Surgeons thus contributing to the gladdening the hearts of their examiners! The custom prevailed till recent times, for the celebrated Pinel, although received as physician at Montpellier, having been rejected at Paris, was still obliged to pay his share of the banquet. As Patin often mentions that many of the Doctors (especially those who prescribed antimony) were much addicted to deep potations, we can easily imagine that such scenes did not always reflect credit on the learned body. The Paris Faculty seems always to have been on terms of bitter rivalry with the other establishments for medical education, especially the Faculty of Montpellier; and, Patin again and again accuses them of disposing (an abuse prevalent amongst some "learned" universities of our own times) of their degrees for mere pecuniary considerations. "If the physicians of Montpellier are badly paid by their patients, they recompense themselves by giving licenses for whoever will pay for them: modo fiat nummis præsentibus. It is an abuse I am astonished at, but have no means of preventing. * The little universities manifeste peccant in publica commoda; they reject no one. young doctor is not received cheaply at one place he goes to another: and this is why the physicians of Rheims are now pleading against those of Angers; seeing that they sell their degrees cheaper, after a slight examination, in a little time, and if it is desired even without theses. Really if some remedy be not found for this disorder, we shall have more physicians in France than there are apples in Normandy or priests in Spain and Italy. Without exaggerating their ignorance, which is in truth extreme, shameful, and dangerous, they will not even study or have any books, it being enough for them si habeant in manibus diplomata academica, etiam vili ære redempta, and if they are the cousins or neighbours of some surgeon or apothecary. I have seen some of them who have even forged their diplomas. They repair to their native country, village, or small town, with scarcely a Perdulcis or a Fernel about them, or not understanding them, pretending however to do so, just as if they had the jus vitæ et necis.” It must not be believed from the scraps of Latin with which Patin, after the manner of his time, delights to interlard his letters, that he was any pedantic smatterer. On the contrary, those of his letters written entirely in that language, and the numerous and apt quotations from the poets in the present collection, prove him to have been an elegant scholar; and indeed it is surprising, amidst his numerous professional occupations, that he could have acquired so intimate an acquaintance with the literature of antiquity and of his own times. We have space only for one other of the numerous extracts we had marked, and this relates to the pathological indications of red hair. "The disease you have taken the trouble to describe to me is somewhat of a gouty nature. I know the patient whose complexion is delicate. His father, who had black hair, died of a pulmonary catarrh, and his mother of an inflammation of the lungs. She was the most quarrelsome and choleric woman in existence, and more than that, she had very red hair. Now, it is constantly observed that, inflammation of the lungs is fatal in the red-haired. I was called in consultation with the late M. De la Vigne upon the case of Collier, Secretary to the King, who was 75 years of age, and suffering from inflammation of the lungs. As he had red hair, I at once predicted a fatal issue. M. De la Vigne inquired where I had learned this prognosis. I replied that I had always observed it to be a very true one, besides which, I had heard it from M. N. Piètre, who had it from his brother, the great Simon Piètre, and that its explanation was, that redhaired persons abounded in an acrid and malignant serosity. He replied that he had always observed the same thing, and I have since read of it in the Ephemerides of Baillou." In concluding our notice of these interesting Letters we feel, as we feared on commencing it, that we have been enabled to convey only a very inadequate idea of them to our readers. But at least they will be aware of the existence of so remarkable a book; and will do well to put themselves in possession of it. Numbers of topics are embraced within the scope of the correspondence, relating to the politics, the general literature, the manners, and the gossip of the day, to which our limits and the objects of this Journal alike prevent our alluding. To M. Reviellé-Parise the medical profession in France owe much for recalling their attention to these interesting letters and their once celebrated author.* It was a work of love and of labour, and we suppose no where could an editor have been found more fitting for the task. Himself an elegant writer and acute critic, evidently an admirer, though not a blind one, of the erudition of a bye-gone age; well versed in the literary history of our profession, and indeed in general literature; a firm upholder of the true dignity and rights of medicine when pursued as a liberal profession and not for mere lucre; but a stern denouncer of all charlatanerie, professional and non-professional; he is fully enabled to enter into the spirit and views of his author, to indicate at once his merits and his failings. This he has carefully and faithfully done in a series of "scientific, historical, philosophical, and literary" footnotes, which add much to the value of the book, by explaining some obscurities, and indicating comparisons between the state of medicine as it was and as it is not invariably, however, in favour of the latter. The preparation of these, and the rectifying the numerous errors of the spu rious editions of Patin's letters, by a comparison with the difficultlydecipherable originals, must have been a work requiring untiring patience. * Alas! how fugitive is fame, unless built upon some solid undertaking which may descend to posterity. The reputation of Guy Patin during his life-time was European, and shortly after his decease several collections of his letters were published and eagerly read; and yet, in less than a couple of centuries afterwards, several well-informed persons are found calling at the publisher's, upon hearing of the new edition, to inquire who is this physician and where is his abode! 1847] Recent Works on the Yellow Fever. 183 I. A DICTIONARY OF PRACTICAL MEDICINE. By James Copland, M.D., F.R.S., &c. &c. Parts X. and XI. Article-HÆ MAGASTRIC PESTILENCE (Yellow Fever). II. REPORT OF A SPECIAL COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF AsSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, ON THE PRESENT QUARANTINE LAWS. Albany, 1846. III. REPORT OF THE FEVER AT BOA VISTA. By Dr. Mc William, R.N. Presented to the House of Commons, in pursuance of their Address of the 16th March, 1847. IV. LETTER ADDRESSED BY SIR WILLIAM PYM TO THE LORDS OF THE COUNCIL, RELATIVE TO A REPORT ON THE FEVER AT BOA VISTA BY DR. MCWILLIAM. Presented to the House of Commons, in pursuance of their Address of May 14th 1847. In recent Numbers of this Journal we have considered at some length two of those wide-spread and devastating diseases, to which the term of Pestilence has been more peculiarly applied by Dr. Copland, and which he has treated of apart and by themselves in his great work on Practical Medicine. The especial object of our remarks in these articles has been to examine the important question-important in a political and commercial, as well as in a strictly professional, point of view-whether the diffusion of the diseases in question over large districts of the earth can with reason be attributed to their direct transmission from one individual to another, or whether it be not mainly owing to some peculiar, although unknown and almost inscrutable, condition of the atmosphere, over which the utmost efforts of man can have no controul, save and except by removing all those causes of insalubrity which, it is well known, invariably add malignancy to morbific miasms, while at the same time they render the human body not only more susceptible of their influence, but also less capable of resisting their fatal operation. In the case of the Plague, abundant cause was shewn that many of the opinions, that have hitherto been maintained (for the last century, at least), are utterly erroneous, and therefore that the system of Quarantine that has been based upon these opinions has been most absurdly vexatious, and most unnecessarily oppressive. The great relaxations of the restraints to commercial intercourse, that have been made within the last six months by the Governments of England and France, are the gratifying results of our more accurate and enlightened knowledge of the disease;-thanks chiefly to the admirable Report of the French Academy, with which our readers are so well ac quainted. With respect to the Epidemic Cholera, the evidence adduced in our last Number will be deemed sufficient, we trust, to satisfy almost every impartial mind that infection, whether by persons or by the medium of inanimate objects, was a very subordinate and merely an occasional agent in the |