A certain Adolphe D. called at Tissot’s residence and rang the door bell. An elderly female servant, who opened the door, said that her master, the doctor, was not at home. “But,” she added, “if you have come to consult him about some malady, I warn you that you will lose your money and have nothing to show for your trouble. For the past twenty years I have had a pain in my stomach, and the doctor has not been able to cure it.” Tissot, to whom I related the incident, joined me in a hearty laugh over the affair.
In November, 1779, Tissot was urged to visit Paris in company with his adopted son, who was studying medicine. Believing that the young student would be greatly benefited by such a visit to the French capital he at once decided to undertake the trip. But, very soon after his arrival in Paris, he discovered that he was to have no rest so long as he remained there. His celebrity brought him almost at once many people who wished to consult him about their ailments. Often, says his biographer, the Rue des Petits Augustins, where his temporary residence was located, was filled with a long line of carriages belonging to the distinguished patients who awaited their turn to interview the great physician from Lausanne. This sort of medical practice was not at all to his taste; and when he was not busy with professional work he was attending an endless series of dinners and receptions. At the end of a few months he returned to Lausanne, and would have been well pleased to remain there permanently; but he soon recognized that, in the interest of his adopted son, he should take up his residence in some German or Italian city where there was a university. Just at this juncture of affairs Borsieri, the distinguished Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the University of Pavia, Tuscany, a man well advanced in years, sent in his resignation. Whereupon Joseph II., Holy Roman Emperor and King of Austria, immediately urged his brother Leopold II., Duke of Tuscany, to offer the position to Dr. Tissot. The latter took the invitation seriously under consideration and in due course of time accepted. His honorarium was fixed at 3000 German florins (about $1500 U. S. currency) and in addition he was accorded various important privileges—such, for example, as a suitably furnished residence; a ward equipped with six beds and arranged in such a manner that clinical instruction might be conveniently given in it; and the right to carry on private practice in the district of Milan and also outside the limits of that district whenever this could be done without interfering with his duties at the university. Further, he was permitted to resign his chair at the end of two years if he should so desire. Finally, he was reimbursed for all his traveling expenses, and was absolved from attendance upon any functions or ceremonies that might conflict with his conscientious scruples as a Protestant. For a Government that was strictly under the control of the Roman Catholic Church these terms were remarkably liberal.
Tissot appears to have been very successful, both as a teacher and in his social relations with the people whom he met during his short stay of two years at Pavia. In a letter which Spallanzani wrote on December 31, 1781, to Charles Bonnet, the distinguished naturalist of Geneva, he speaks of Tissot’s arrival at Pavia in the following terms:—
He seems to be pleased with our university, with our colleagues, and with our students. Everybody in Pavia likes him. His lectures are most instructive and well adapted to the character of our young men who have come hither from every part of Italy to profit from the teaching of this Swiss Hippocrates. Apart from the knowledge which he possesses, and which certainly is very extensive, Monsieur Tissot is the most polished, the most amiable man I have ever met.
It would be a pleasure to furnish here a résumé of the detailed account which Tissot’s biographer gives of his lectures and of his most practical clinical instruction, but I perceive that I have already drawn out my sketch to an inordinate length, and I must therefore stop at this point. I will simply add one more item of information. Early in 1783 Tissot publicly announced his intention of resigning his professorship at the end of the period of service that had originally been agreed upon—viz., two years; and on June 12 of the same year, at which date the academic year ended, he delivered his farewell address to the students of the university. To perpetuate the memory of this occasion those students who were permanent residents of Pavia set up in one of the lecture rooms a suitably inscribed marble tablet; those who came from other parts of Europe (72 in all) prepared their memorial in the form of a small printed volume (104 pages) of sonnets written in Latin, Greek, Italian, German, French and English, and grouped together under the title:—
Sentimenti d’Affetto e di Riconoscenza Degli Studenti di medicina Verso il Loro Immortale Precettore, il Signor S. A. D. Tissot.
On the 21st of June, 1783, in company with his nephew, Tissot left Pavia for Switzerland by way of the Simplon Pass.
Already in 1794 his health began to show unmistakable signs of breaking down under the influence of a progressive pulmonary tuberculosis, and it was not long afterward that his death occurred (June 13, 1797) at his residence in Lausanne.
Aloysius Galvani, born at Bologna, Italy, on September 9, 1759, and appointed public lecturer in anatomy at the university in 1762, published in 1791 a treatise in which he announced his discovery of a new force to which he gave the name of animal electricity, but which subsequently received that of “galvanism” in honor of its discoverer,—a name which it has retained ever since. By a mere accident Galvani discovered the fact that when two different metals—iron and copper, for example—are brought in contact with muscular tissue there results from this contact a force, seemingly an electric current, which causes the muscle to contract. Six years later—that is, in 1797—the Cisalpine Republic was formed by the joining together of what were known as the Cispadane and the Transpadane Republics—two political organizations that occupied respectively, as their names imply, territories situated the one on the north side and the other on the south side of the river Po, and both of which organizations owed their existence to the action of Napoleon Bonaparte. When the professors of the University of Bologna, which was located in the Transpadane territory, were called upon to swear allegiance to the new republic, Galvani was the only member of the Faculty who refused to take the oath, and as a consequence he lost his professorship. His death occurred in 1798.