At the corner of the Rue de la Bûcherie and the old Rue des Rats, now known by the more dignified appellation of the Rue de l'Hôtel Colbert, may still be seen, unless the unsparing hand of "modern improvement" has very recently swept it away along with so many other memorials of the past, a dirty, dilapidated building topped by a round tower, which you might take for some old pigeon-house. The half-obliterated inscription upon an escutcheon on one of the facades of the edifice indicates, however, some heretofore high and venerable destination—Urbi et orbi salus. If curiosity lead you to penetrate into the interior of this dismal edifice, you find yourself, after mounting a damp staircase, in a great circular hall, divided into four irregular compartments. Above some empty niches hollowed in the thickness of the wall runs a wide cornice, the now-defaced sculptures of which represent alternately the cock—Esculapius's bird and emblem of vigilance—and the pelican nourishing its young, the type of self-sacrifice—watchfulness and unselfish charity, the two great duties incumbent on the professor of the healing art. You stand, in fact, in the midst of the ancient amphitheatre of the Faculty of Medicine. There studied, and there, in their turn, taught, the great anatomists of the seventeenth century, Bartholin, Riolan, Pecquet, Littre, Winslow. This building was an old adjunct to a large and handsome hotel belonging to the medical body, containing their chapel, library, laboratory, a vast hall for solemn disputations, with minor saloons for the daily lectures, etc., with the addition of a large court and botanical garden. It was abandoned long before the Revolution, and not a trace of all this corporate glory of the medical faculty now remains. The quarter of Paris in which it stood, known formerly as the Latin quarter, long preserved a peculiar stamp and physiognomy. Here were the colleges of St. Michel, of Normandy and Picardy, of Laon, Presles, Beauvais, Cornouailles, and that long succession of churches, convents, colleges, and high toppling houses, filled with a studious youth, which formerly crowded the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue de la Harpe. All these and many other sanctuaries of religion and of science, so intimately connected in the middle ages, clustered around the faculty. Here, in fact, was the centre of the university of Paris, whose origin is lost in the obscurity investing the early mediaeval period. The methodical classification under the head of faculties of the different studies pursued at that celebrated institution dates, however, from the close of the twelfth century. These faculties formed independent companies, attached to their common mother, the university, like branches to the parent stem.
Disregarding all apocryphal pretensions to antiquity, we cannot assign an earlier date for the formation of the medical body into an independent corporation than the year 1267. About that time we find the faculty in possession of its statutes, keeping registers and affixing to documents its massive silver seal. The term Faculty of Medicine, it must be observed, is modern. The title Physicorum Facultas, or Facultas in Physica, was long preserved. Whatever we may think of the empirical practice and dogmatic character of the medical art in those times, we cannot but see in this an [{497}] indication that natural science was even then the recognized basis of medicine. We have here, if not a principle clearly understood and habitually followed, at least an intuition and a kind of programme of the future. A memorial of the old designation survives in our own country in the title of physician, while in the land where it originated it has been discontinued.
Born in the cloister, medicine long retained an ecclesiastical character. Most of the doctors in early times were canons; and those who were neither priests nor even clerks were still bound to celibacy; a regulation which remained in force long after councils had decreed the incompatibility of the exercise of the medical profession with the ecclesiastical state.
The general assemblies of the faculty were held sometimes round the font of Notre Dame, sometimes at St. Geneviève des Ardents, sometimes at the Priory of St. Eloi; while, for the ordinary purposes of instruction, it shared fraternally with the faculty of theology the alternate use of some common room with a shake-down of straw in the Quartier St. Jacques. But by-and-bye riches began to pour in, chiefly through the means of the legacies of members of the medical corps or other well-wishers; and, thanks to the liberality of Jacques Desparts, physician to Charles VIl., the corporation of doctors was finally installed in the abode we have just described. To the general worth and respectability of the body in the fifteenth century we have the testimony of Cardinal d'Estoutteville, who, in 1452, was deputed by the Pope to reorganize the university of Paris, and who found less to reform in the faculty of medicine than in any other department. Indeed, no change of much importance was introduced, with the exception of the revocation of the law of celibacy, which the cardinal pronounced to be both "impious and unreasonable."
Independence of spirit and great reverence for its own traditions were characteristic of the medical body from its earliest beginnings. It loved to describe itself as veteris disciplinae retentissima. In those days men gloried in their respect for antiquity. In common with all the different bodies which composed the university of Paris, the medical corporation possessed great privileges—exemption from all taxation, direct or indirect, from all public burdens, from all onerous services or obligations. When we sum up all the advantages enjoyed by this and other favored bodies and classes in the middle ages, the reflection naturally suggests itself—what must have been the condition of the poor, who possessed no privileges and bore all the financial burdens? In the days, however, when standing armies in the pay of government had no existence, when the king himself was a rich proprietor with large personal domains, when national debt and its interest were things unheard of, the ordinary imposts, as distinguished from all arbitrary and accidental exactions, were, of course, very much lighter than those of modern times. Liberty in those days assumed the form of privilege; and its spirit was nursed and kept alive within the bosom of these self-ruling corporations, and in none more remarkably than in that of medicine. The esprit de corps naturally existed with peculiar strength in a body not merely organized for purposes of instruction, but exercising a liberal profession, of which it had the monopoly. [Footnote 69] Hence a minute internal legislation imposed upon all its members, and willingly accepted in view of the interests of the body. Its alumni were aspirants to a life-long membership; whereas with us the medical man's dependence upon the faculty virtually ceases the day he takes his doctor's degree. He has nothing more to ask or to receive from it; his affair is now with the public; [{498}] and the sense of brotherhood with his colleagues in the profession is lost, it is to be feared, not unfrequently in a feeling of rivalry. But it was otherwise in the olden time. The day which now sends forth the full-fledged doctor to his independent career drew the tie closer which bound him to his order, in which then only he began to take his solemn place. The honor and the interest of each member thus became common property, and unworthy conduct was punished by summary exclusion from the body.
[Footnote 69: It is probably this peculiarity which caused the medical to be considered as pre-eminently the faculty. Its practice brought it into intimate contact with the world at large; and this has also doubtless led to the exclusive retention, in this instance, of a designation common in its origin to other departments of learning.]
Unfortunately this esprit de corps had its bad as well as its good results. It produced a certain narrowness of mind, a love of routine, and no slight attachment to professional jargon. It is not that the faculty was actually the enemy of all progress, but progress must come from itself. As no association of men, however, can enjoy a monopoly of genius, useful and brilliant discoveries emanating from other quarters had to encounter the hostility of the chartered body. This spirit was exemplified in its animosity toward surgery, long a separate profession, in its prejudice against the doctrine of the circulation of the blood, because an English discovery; against antimony, because it originated with the rival Montpelier school; against quinine, because it came from America. To these subjects we may hereafter recur; in the meantime we note them as instances of medical bigotry, which exposed the profession to just ridicule, but which has drawn down upon it censure and disesteem of perhaps a somewhat too sweeping character. It would be unfair to judge the ancient faculty solely from its exhibitions of foolish pedantry and blind prejudice; and it is our object on the present occasion to give a slight sketch of its constitution and internal government, such as may enable the reader to form a juster and more impartial view both of its faults and of its substantial merits. Indeed, without some solid titles to general esteem, it would seem improbable that the faculty should have attained to the high position which we find it occupying in the seventeenth century.
One accidental cause, no doubt, of the importance of the doctors during the whole period which we are considering was their small relative number. From a computation made by a modern member of the medical profession in France, [Footnote 70] to whom we are indebted for our facts, the average number of doctors in the capital from the year 1640 to the year 1670 did not exceed 110. Compared with the population of Paris, which is reckoned at 540,000 souls, this gives one doctor for every 4,900 of the inhabitants. The medical corps is now 1,830 strong, while the population has risen only to 1,740,000. Great as is this increase of population, greater, we see, proportionally has been that of the medical practitioners, who are at present as 1 to 940. If sickness was as prevalent in the seventeenth century as it is now, and recourse to physic and physicking as frequent, we can imagine that the faculty must have necessarily occupied a distinguished position. Many offices now undertaken by public institutions or by government devolved, also, at that time on the faculty, which to the best of its ability supplied the want of sanitary regulations, and exercised a kind of medical police, including the supervision of articles of diet. All this must have helped to swell their importance. A large proportion of the doctors received during this selected period of thirty years were Parisians; and nothing is more common than the perpetuity of the profession in certain families. This circumstance must have combined with the corporate reverence for their traditions to intensify their attachment to a received system, and to strengthen that spirit of union which is a source of power. The respect which the lower bench paid to the upper, and the young to the ancient [{499}]—and by "young" we mean young in their degree, not in years—must have contributed toward the same result. It required ten years of doctorate to qualify a man to take his place amongst this venerable class; and the statutes are prolix on the subject of the respect due to the ancients from their juniors on the bench; a respect which was to be marked by every external act of deference.
[Footnote 70: Maurice Raynaud, Docteur en Médecine, Docteur ès Lettres. Les Médecins au temps de Molière.—Moeurs, Institutions, Doctrines. Paris, 1862. Didler.]
But the first and great tie which bound all the members together was religion. To profess the Catholic faith was long an essential condition of admission to the examinations. The faculty gave an energetic proof in 1637 of the importance it attached to this fundamental rule, when it withstood the pressing solicitations of the king's brother, the Duke of Orleans; in favor of a certain Brunier, the son of his own physician and a Protestant, although the prince condescended to address a flattering letter to the dean of the faculty, signing himself "Votre bon ami, Gaston," and although his request was backed by a royal injunction. The sovereign must needs bow to the authority of the statutes, respectfully but firmly urged in contravention of his regal pleasure. Yet this would seem to have been a closing effort, for in 1648 we find four Protestant doctors on the lists. Every year there was a solemn mass on St. Luke's day, at which all the members were bound to be present, and which even at the commencement of the seventeenth century was still sung by the doctors of the faculty. After mass the statutes were publicly read. There was a like obligation, with a penalty for its neglect, to attend an annual mass for deceased doctors, and another for benefactors, as also to accompany the bodies of their brethren to the grave.