In 1793, when the storms of the French Revolution had reached their acme of violence, young Bayle, who was then only nineteen years old, attended a political meeting at Embrun and made such a stirring appeal to the mountaineers there assembled, in regard to their duty as Republicans, that he completely won their confidence, and was accordingly chosen to represent them at the approaching reception of the Proconsuls Barras and Fréron, who had been sent by the Convention to persuade the inhabitants of that district to carry out the violent measures which had been planned against the city of Digne. The Proconsuls, who in the meantime had arrived at Digne, quickly discovered that public sentiment was not in favor of the measures advocated by the Convention; and accordingly, in the fear that an uprising of the citizens might imperil their own lives, they promptly fled from that city; but, before leaving, they made arrangements for the arrest of the young orator who had produced such a strongly antagonistic impression upon the people. As soon as Bayle’s father and brother had learned these facts they quickly took all the steps necessary for secretly getting Gaspard out of Digne and sending him as speedily as possible to Montpellier, where—by enrolling himself among the students of Medicine—they believed that he might reasonably expect to escape the clutches of Barras and Fréron. These measures proved successful, and thus Bayle’s life was saved and his attention diverted from the Law to Medicine, a career in which he was destined to gain great credit.
After spending three years at Montpellier Bayle was sent, as an Officier de Santé, to serve at a military hospital temporarily established at Nice, in the south of France. And here let me remark, parenthetically, that this title should not be translated by the corresponding English term “Health Officer.” In 1795 a new type of medical school was established in France, the object of this innovation being to provide a class of practitioners who could meet all the ordinary medical needs of the peasants at a charge considerably less than that demanded by the graduates of the high schools. The course in these new schools covered a period of only two years, and the graduates were classed as “Officiers de Santé.”
GASPARD LAURENT BAYLE
As Bayle’s duties here at Nice were not very exacting he divided the time which he had at his disposal between the bedside observation of cases of actual disease and the study of treatises relating to pathology. In 1798 he went to Paris and followed several courses of instruction, more particularly that given by Corvisart on pathological anatomy. In 1799, at a competitive examination, he won the position of Assistant in Anatomy, and from that time forward he devoted a large part of his time to the work of making post-mortem examinations.
In 1802 Bayle received his degree of Doctor of Medicine. The thesis which he wrote on this occasion created a great sensation, partly because it described an entirely new form of gangrene, and even more on account of the philosophic manner in which he defended all his statements when called upon to do so at the public cross-examination which, at all the foreign universities, commonly precedes the bestowal of the degree upon the candidate. Two of Bayle’s friends who were present on this occasion, secured shorthand notes of the discussion that took place between the candidate and the professors (Petit-Radel, Pinel, Alphonse Leroy and Percy) whose duty it was to question him with regard to the views put forward in the thesis. The report based upon these shorthand notes covers nine printed pages of the biographic sketch which lies before me, and is not—as will readily be appreciated by my readers—suitable for reproduction here in its entirety; nor would a digest of such a report serve any useful purpose. The most that seems to me permissible under the circumstances is to furnish here two or three brief extracts, from a perusal of which it will be possible to form at least some idea of the character of this cross-examination. It should be stated, however, by way of preface, that Professor Petit-Radel had, just before the discussion began, raised objections to Bayle’s failure, in his thesis, to include in his list of inflammatory affections “the whitish engorgements observed at times in different organs”; and he then added the following remark: “You are not disposed, I assume, to recognize the existence of Boerhaave’s ‘white inflammation.’”
(Here follows the first part of the stenographic report of the cross-examination.)
BAYLE: “If in the affection to which you refer the swelling is accompanied by pain, and if it terminates by undergoing resolution or by suppuration, then I should say that it bore some relationship to inflammation; but if there is neither redness, pain, fever, nor suppuration, I should declare that it possesses none of the characters which distinguish inflammatory affections, and that consequently this so-called ‘white inflammation’ should be considered by us as something imaginary. At the same time I should not like to have anybody get the impression, from what I have said, that I deny the existence of such things as white tumors or swellings, indolent in character, and either elastic or permitting the pressure of a finger to leave the mark called ‘pitting’; I simply wish to emphasize the fact that these affections do not manifest any of the characteristics of an inflammatory disturbance.”
PETIT-RADEL: “Do you not believe that there exist certain kinds of humors which possess the power of giving rise to a white variety of inflammation?”
BAYLE: “As I do not know what this ‘white inflammation’ really is, you must not expect me to entertain a clear idea of what its immediate causes are; and even if I were personally familiar with this type of ‘inflammation,’ it is more than likely that I would wander far from the truth if I were to attempt to define the particular kind of humor which causes this affection. It is easy to say that bile, or some other humor that possesses a sufficiently acrid character, is the exciting cause; and then I might print what I have to say on the subject in a beautiful book.[[21]] But of what use are all these hypothetical deductions; why resort to pure operations of the imagination when we seek to explain natural phenomena? Is it not better to say simply ‘I do not know’ than to erect a pompous edifice on a foundation of moving sand?”