One year later, the size of the Gazette was increased by the addition of four separate pages which bore the title, “Nouvelles,” and simultaneously the price of the entire journal (8 pages) was increased to one sou. It is scarcely necessary to state that the Gazette was directly inspired by Richelieu, and that even the king occasionally took a hand in editing it. Gilles de la Tourette, the author of the memoir from which I have compiled the present brief sketch, says that he examined all the issues of the Gazette from 1631 to 1653 but failed to find in them a single réclame—advertisement or editorial puff.
From the very day on which it was first published, the Gazette proved a brilliant success. I should have mentioned, at the beginning of this sketch, the fact that for a certain length of time Renaudot contributed liberally from his own funds toward the support of his pet schemes of benevolence, but it does not appear, in the account given by de la Tourette, whether the Gazette enterprise should not be counted as one of these schemes. At the same time, the thought naturally suggests itself that this physician’s motive in advocating the publishing of an official newspaper like the Gazette was probably a strong desire to win for his humanitarian schemes the strong support which the Cardinal and the King would be able to grant. Whether this be true or not, the idea of creating an official newspaper under the protection of the highest authority in France certainly showed far-sighted wisdom on the part of Renaudot. In 1640,—i.e., nine years after the founding of the Gazette as an official dispenser of political and civic news,—Renaudot changed its scope by adding to it the character of a medical journal. After 1640, therefore, the Gazette may rightly be classed as representing the first attempt to publish a medical periodical in France.
CARDINAL DUC DE RICHELIEU
(From a portrait engraved on copper by Nanteuil in 1655.)
Another important feature was added by Renaudot to his philanthropic scheme in this same year 1640. He obtained from the King a decree authorizing him to establish a “Bureau de Consultations Charitables pour les Pauvres Malades.” The manner in which this Bureau was to be conducted may be briefly explained in the following words. At certain fixed hours fifteen physicians, all of them friends of the founder, and a smaller number of apothecaries presented themselves at the Bureau, where, seated at a few separate tables, the physicians listened to the statements made by the poor people who had come there in the hope of obtaining relief from their maladies. In the simpler cases, a single physician was fully equal to the task of prescribing whatever the patient’s condition called for, but in those of a more obscure nature, two or three of the physicians present joined in a consultation. After the question of a suitable treatment had been decided, one of the apothecaries in attendance prepared the remedy or remedies which had been prescribed, and at the same time a written statement of the diagnosis was handed to the patient. If the ailment happened to be of a surgical nature, the measures required for its treatment were carried out on the spot. Some of the patients who presented themselves at the Bureau were easily able to pay for professional advice; and, when such a person appeared, an opportunity was afforded for dropping into a suitable box the fee which he or she was disposed to give. This money was utilized in paying for the remedies furnished the poor. In exceptional cases, it was perfectly evident that drugs alone could not afford the desired relief; the need was rather for more and better food. Fully realizing this need, and acting under his strongly benevolent impulses, Renaudot not infrequently placed money in the hands of these suffering dispensary patients when they were about to return to their homes. The exact amount of these gifts is not known, but they must in the aggregate have been large; for his biographer says that, in addition to the sums which his more prosperous patients placed in his hands for the benefit of the poor, he contributed annually out of his own purse, toward the maintenance of these free consultations, the sum of 2,000 livres (the “livre” being of about the same value as the franc). The success of the Bureau was so great that in the course of a few months it became necessary that a certain number of physicians should be at the consulting rooms of the institution at all times during the day.
As a natural result of this increase in the Bureau’s popularity the celebrity of Renaudot also increased, until it extended to every part of the kingdom; and, as a further result, the institution itself now began to take on the character of a school for clinical instruction—an entirely new feature; for at that period no facilities of this kind were provided by the Paris Faculty of Medicine. When Renaudot observed this new and unexpected development of the work carried on at the Bureau he petitioned the King for permission to erect, at his own expense, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, the most populous quarter of the City of Paris, a “Hostel des Consultations Charitables”—in other words, a free hospital for the poor.
Statue of Théophraste Renaudot at Loudun, France. (Courtesy of Monsieur le Pasteur Paul Barnaud, of Sainte Foy la Grande [Gironde], France.)
Up to the year 1638 Renaudot had got along very amicably with the Paris Faculty. He had often consulted with them and he had entered the names of his two sons, Isaac and Eusebius, as students at the medical school. Furthermore, there could not have existed any prejudice against him on religious grounds as—upon the advice of Richelieu and Father Joseph (Leclerc du Tremblay, or “His Gray Eminence”)—his two sons had been educated in the Roman Catholic faith. It appears, however, that these favorable considerations were not strong enough to prevent professional jealousy, on the part of the Paris physicians, from setting to work to undermine all Renaudot’s good work. The real truth—viz., that the newcomer’s success was robbing them of some of their paying practice—was not confessed by these men openly, but instead they objected to his having, with the King’s permission (granted in 1640), established furnaces for the manufacture of chemical remedies. They also claimed that he was injuring the profession of medicine through his doctrine that good effects were obtainable from the employment of both opium and antimony as internal remedies, and also through his maintenance of the new doctrine (1616) of the circulation of the blood. Were not these professional sins, they claimed, sufficiently heinous to justify them in summoning him before the magistrates as an impostor? They believed that they were fully justified in so doing; and accordingly they proceeded without further delay to bring suit against Renaudot.
It would require much additional space to furnish here even a condensed account of the events which characterized this disgraceful attack by the Paris Faculty—and especially by Guy Patin, who was at that time its Dean—against Renaudot, and I have therefore no hesitation in omitting all but one or two further details of this part of Renaudot’s history. In the first place, Cardinal Richelieu and the King stood firmly by Renaudot to the very end; and, on July 14, 1641, the King’s Council condemned the Faculty on all points of their charge, and in this manner granted complete authorization to Renaudot’s work. He himself, notwithstanding the great victory which he had won over his unscrupulous enemies, all of them physicians of high social position, resumed his efforts to win them over to a friendly attitude—not toward himself individually, but toward the benevolent schemes which he was doing his best to establish on a firm footing. All his efforts, however, toward pacification proved of no avail.