2. View of the former École de Médecine since it has been incorporated with the new structures of the Faculté de Médecine.
(From “La Vie Universitaire.”)
3. Musée Dupuytren. Formerly the refectory of the Convent of the Cordeliers (Franciscans), built in the fifteenth century.
(From “La Vie Universitaire.”)
On the plea that the people who dwelt in the country districts live simpler lives, etc., and consequently are subject to illnesses of a less complicated nature, there was passed by the National Convention another law in accordance with which a lower grade of doctors was created—i.e., practitioners who were called Officiers de Santé. At first these men were given permission to practice after they had completed the third year of the regular course of studies, but later they were absolved from the necessity of taking any part of the regular course, provided they could show that they had spent five years in work connected with a hospital or had been in the service of a regular physician during a period of six years. Gradually, as the number of the regular physicians increased and as the country became more prosperous, the Officiers de Santé diminished in number. In 1847 there were 7456 such practitioners, but already in 1872 the number had fallen to 4653. On the other hand, the regular doctors of medicine had increased during the same period from 10,643 to 10,766.
In 1864 an attempt was made in the French Parliament to abolish the institution of Officiers de Santé, but one of the members, Bonjean, opposed the motion and it fell through. The argument which he brought forward and which is quoted by Puschmann, is essentially the following:—
When simple people belonging to the poorer class of the community are taken ill they want a physician who is himself simple and poor like themselves, a man who is able to comprehend the language and the needs of his modest patients, and who, because of his low birth, because of the fact that he has been habituated from early childhood to the plain and simple living of the peasant’s cottage, and also because he has been put to comparatively small expense to secure the grade which permits him to practice the profession of medicine, is quite contented to accept a modest fee for his services. The Officier de Santé is, for all these reasons, admirably fitted to fulfil his mission of modest devotion; for him, under these circumstances it will be comparatively easy to act as the confidant, the counsellor, and the sympathetic friend of the patient.
It is not possible for me to state (1919) how far the recent war has upset all the arrangements mentioned above.
Parisian Hospitals.—Of the three large hospitals which existed in Paris at the beginning of the nineteenth century—the Hôtel-Dieu, la Charité and la Salpétrière—I am not able to furnish more than a few scanty details. According to an editorial which I find in the London Lancet for November 25, 1837, the management of the English hospitals destined for the relief of the sick poor during the period now under consideration was inferior to that of the similar institutions in France. There are good reasons for believing, however, that, after the lapse of a few years, the English hospitals became in every respect the equals of those in France. In Tenon’s elaborate report on the Parisian hospitals examined by him in 1816 I find it stated that la Salpétrière was used in part as a prison and in part as an asylum for the insane; but, in another part of this report, he states that at one time this hospital sheltered as many as 8000 persons, the great majority of whom were legitimate hospital patients.