Monsieur, brother of Louis XIV., had an insuperable aversion to the operation, however dexterous might be the operator. At Marly, while at table with the King, he was visited with such ominous symptoms, that Fochon, the first physician of the court, said—"You are threatened with apoplexy, and you cannot be too soon blooded."
But the advice was not acted on, though the King entreated that it might be complied with.
"You will find," said Louis, "what your obstinacy will cost you. We shall be awoke some of these nights to be told that you are dead."
The royal prediction, though not fulfilled to the letter, soon proved substantially true. After a gay supper at St. Cloud, Monsieur, just as he was about to retire to bed, quitted the world. He was asking M. de Ventadour for a glass of liqueur sent him by the Duke of Savoy, when he dropped down dead. Anyhow Monsieur went out of this life thinking of something nice. The Marquis of Hertford, with all his deliberation, could not do more.
The excess to which the practice of venesection was carried in the last century is almost beyond belief. The Mercure de France (April, 1728, and December, 1729) gives the particulars of the illness of a woman named Gignault. She was aged 24 years, was the wife of an hussar, and resided at St. Sauge, a town of the Nivernois. Under the direction of Monsieur Theveneau, Seigneur de Palmery, M.D., of St. Sauge, she was bled three thousand nine hundred and four times in nine months (i. e. from the 6th of September, 1726, to the 3rd of June, 1727). By the 15th of July, in the same year, the bleedings numbered four thousand five hundred and fifty-five. From the 6th of September, 1726, to the 1st of December, 1729, the blood-lettings amounted to twenty-six thousand two hundred and thirty. Did this really occur? Or was the editor of the Mercure de France the original Baron Munchausen?
Such an account as the above ranges us on the side of the German physician, who petitioned that the use of the lancet might be made penal. Garth's epigram runs:—
"Like a pert skuller, one physician plies,
And all his art and all his skill he tries;
But two physicians, like a pair of oars,
Conduct you faster to the Stygian shores."
It would, however, be difficult to imagine a quicker method to destroy human life than that pursued by Monsieur Theveneau. A second adviser could hardly have accelerated his movements, or increased his determination not to leave his reduced patient a chance of recovery.
"A rascal," exclaimed a stout, asthmatic old gentleman, to a well-dressed stranger on Holborn Hill—"a rascal has stolen my hat. I tried to overtake him—and I'm—so—out of breath—I can't stir another inch." The stranger eyed the old gentleman, who was panting and gasping for hard life, and then pleasantly observing, "Then I'm hanged, old boy, if I don't have your wig," scampered off, leaving his victim bald as a baby. M. Theveneau was the two thieves in one. He first brought his victim to a state of helplessness, and then "carried out his little system." It would be difficult to assign a proper punishment to such a stupid destroyer of human life. Formerly, in the duchy of Wurtemberg, the public executioner, after having sent out of the world a certain number of his fellow-creatures, was dignified with the degree of doctor of physic. It would not be otherwise than well to confer on such murderous physicians as M. Theveneau the honorary rank of hangman extraordinary.
The incomes that have been realized by blood-letting alone are not less than those which, in the present day, are realized by the administration of chloroform. An eminent phlebotomist, not very many years since, made a thousand per annum by the lancet.