The American in Paris; vol. 2 of 2

by John Sanderson

A degree of Doctor of Medicine must be preceded by a degree of Bachelor of Letters and Science, and four courses of lectures, a thesis sustained in public, and five public examinations. A vacancy in a professorship is supplied by a “concour” that is, the several candidates appear before the Faculty, a subject is given, they retire, and in the prescribed time return with their thesis, which they read and sustain in public, and the choice is settled by a majority of the judges. The diligence of a French doctor should take him to heaven. He rises in the night, and, long before other men have left their pillows, has done a good day’s work. He has visited from four to five hundred sick in the hospitals, prescribed for each, made his autopses and other operations, and explained the cases separately and conjointly to his pupils. He has then consultations till ten, breakfasts, and is in his Professor’s chair at the hour, visiting his patients and giving audience in the intervals of these duties—and has the rest of the day to himself.

In his professorial capacity he wears a cap, a gown and crimson sash. He has given up the wig and gold-headed cane to Molière. Medicine here is divided into strict specialities. One man feels your pulse, and another gives you physic. This exclusive attention to one object, at the same time it impairs the general excellence of the profession, has made the French the most expert operators in the world. Civiale in his Lithotritie has no equal amongst living men; Laënnec does wonders in Auscultation with his Stethoscope, and Larrey, who has cut off the legs of half Europe, and was knighted by Bonaparte for such merits, has been far obscured by the fame of Dupuytren.

It is said here commonly by foreigners that in the French practice there is a reckless sacrifice of life and disregard of humanity, by adventurous and needless experiments; having, at least, no other object than surgical instruction, and that, from neglect or ignorance of treatment after operations, the loss of patients is greater than in any other country. I should suppose, from what I have myself seen, that a millstone, compared to a French surgeon’s heart, would be good pap to feed one’s children upon. I may remark, also, that the science of medicine seems to me less indebted for its improvement to the good feelings, than to the pride, jealousy and avarice, and other bad passions of its practitioners. They have, to be sure, the courtesies they cannot well avoid for each other in social intercourse, but their private and professional purpose appears to be to starve each other, to persecute each other to the grave, and dissect each other after death. Broussais whips all the world, and all the world Broussais. A lecture of Lisfranc is a flourish of bludgeons and daggers; he lashes Velpeau and Roux, even stabs Dupuytren in his winding-sheet, and has as many lashes in return. It is surprising that the professors of humanity should be precisely those who have the least of that commodity on hand. The great disputes, just now, amongst the choice professors, are whether one ought to bleed or not bleed in acute fevers;—this in the nineteenth century! and whether one should administer purgatives in typhus and typhoid affections.

M. Boulaud and Chaumel, and somebody else, are gaining famous reputations for this “new practice,” which gained and lost reputations in America forty-six years ago. However, from the facility of dissections, the number of sick in the hospitals, as well as from the eminence of the teachers, and cheapness of education, the School of Medicine of Paris is called very generally the best school of the world. It has at present twenty-three professors, besides honorary professors and assistants, and the number of students is about four thousand five hundred.

I have already said a great deal about these French schools, but I have added another sheet and may as well go on to the end of it. From a bare enumeration, you see that education is here thrown in every one’s face as a thing without price. If books and instruction constitute learning, the most literary people of this earth are assuredly the Parisians. But there is scarce any error to which short-sighted mortals are more subject than referring effects to wrong causes; and I believe a very common application of it is, to attribute a vast number of virtues to our learned institutions which they are not entitled to. I believe we over-rate generally the advantages to be derived from abroad to the prejudice of personal exertions; a source to which, after all, we must resort for at least three-fourths of our acquirements.

Corporations of learning are altogether modern devices, and many nations were eminent in learning before their invention. At the end of the fifteenth century, all science was thought to be shut up in their halls. Only think of ten thousand students in the University of Bologna at once!—and it was not until Lord Bacon and some others had dissipated a little of this error, and taught men to look into nature and experience, and not into the cloisters of the monks, for mental improvement, that any one sought it elsewhere.

But many persons are still wedded to the system, and still think that all that is wanting to the discipline of the mind, is the munificence of government in founding Universities; so some think that building churches is all that is wanting to take one to heaven. There has never been a law-school in Great Britain, and in no country of Europe has there been an equal number of eminent lawyers, and teachers of the law. It is since the Revolution that a law-school exists with any credit in France, and her Hôpitals and d’Aguesseaus, and other distinguished lawyers, are anterior to that date. And what did the old French Academy for learning, which the members would not have done, and done better, in their individual capacities? The unaided works of individuals of the same period are as superior to her united labours, as the poetry of Racine or Boileau to her prize poems, or Johnson’s Dictionary to the Dictionary of the Academy.

When men have been used to see a certain assemblage of objects in connection with learning, to imagine it attainable by any other process is more difficult perhaps than you imagine. When Doctor Bell attempted to introduce writing upon sand into his school at Calcutta, it was opposed by the patrons of the school as a ridiculous innovation, and not one of the regular instructors could be found, who would even aid in making the experiment; all stuck out for the dignity of pot-hooks and goose-quills, and this doctor was forced to train a few of his own pupils to these new functions; which gave him the first idea of his monitorial system of teaching. We perceive daily the inefficiency of our present systems and practices, but we have been set a-going in a certain direction, and we will not depart from it.

It is known that the Athenians were the people of the world, who set the highest value upon learning, and that they had no Universities or Colleges; and that they obtained a literary eminence, which modern nations do not pretend to have equalled, without the instrumentality of such institutions. The profession of teaching amongst them was left open to the competition of professional ability, and the teacher received no salary from government or any corporation; except that the academy was assigned to Plato, as the Lyceum to Aristotle, and the Portico to Zeno, in reward of extraordinary services. But the teachers of that country were such men as Aristotle, Plato, Isocrates, Lysias, Longinus, and Plutarch, who, be it said with much respect for the Cousins and the Villemains, have had no superiors since their times; and the Lyceum, Academy, and Portico, though private schools, and sustained only by the teachers’ merits, and the public patronage, were the noblest institutions of any age or country, not excepting the Sorbonne, and the College de France.

The good which these corporate institutions do, seems to me doubtful; the evil which they do is manifest. I will notice one or two instances; and first, the injury they inflict upon the common or private schools, which covering a greater surface of instruction and communicating the knowledge most useful to mankind, should not hold a second place in the public concern. It is a rule of all countries not to supply the professorships of colleges from the inferior orders of the profession. In other pursuits, promotion is the reward of actual services; from lawyers are judges, from sailors admirals, and from cardinals popes; but in teaching, the very fact of being a teacher acts as a disqualification for any higher distinction.