The head of the corporation was the dean. His powers were extensive, and the honor paid to him unbounded. He was the "guardian of the discipline and statutes" of the faculty, vindex disciplinae et custos legum; he was at once its foremost champion and its highest dignitary. He was also its historian, entering in its great registers all facts interesting to the corporation which occurred during the course of his administration. The account of each diaconate is headed thus:
"In Nomine Omnipotentis Dei, Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Incipit commentarius rerum in decanatu . . . gestarum."
Amongst other topics judged worthy of registration is a necrologic notice of members deceased during the period. Take as a specimen, which marks at the same time the high estimation in which the diaconate was held, the account given of Merlet's death in 1663. He was the "ancient of the company," and had been remarkable for the zeal he exercised in its behalf. The then dean, the illustrious Antoine Morand, pays the venerable doctor a visit just before he expires; and the dying man breaks out in a kind of Nunc dimittis—"Now I can die contented, since it has been given me to behold once more the dean of the faculty." Valot, the king's physician, who had come to see the patient, expresses in language of much reverence his hope that Merlet may still live to illustrate the supreme dignity in which he stands amongst them. The "patriarch" with his last breath energetically refuses such excessive honors. He confesses that he holds a high rank as ancient of the school, but not the highest. "To the dean alone," he says, "belongs supreme honor." "Sublime words," observes Morand in his funeral notice: "veritable song of the dying swan, proceeding from a man truly wise and endowed with all perfection! May he rest in the peace of the Lord." Of course, it is a dean who is speaking. The charge was indeed a weighty one, both externally and internally; for in spite of general respect, the medical corporation, like most privileged bodies, had active enemies. Every two years a fresh election took place on the first Saturday after All Saints'. The dean deposed the insignia of his dignity and gave a report of the state of affairs to [{500}] the assembled doctors, who, as usual on all solemn occasions, had previously attended mass. All their names were then placed in two urns; one containing those of the ancients, the other those of the juniors. The dean shook the urns, and drawing three names from the first and two from the second, proclaimed them aloud. The five doctors thus chosen by lot as electors, and, as such, themselves ineligible, swore to nominate the worthiest, and retired to the chapel to implore the divine aid. They then elected by a majority of their number three doctors, two ancients and one junior. Amidst solemn silence, the dean once more drew the lot, and the name which came forth was proclaimed dean for the next two years. The professors, who for long years were but two in number, were also chosen biennially, and by a similar combination of lot and election. Some good must have arisen from the liability under which every practitioner of the medical art lay of being called on to teach it. Another not unwise regulation was that which, reversing the order observed in the case of the dean, placed in the professional urn two junior names against one ancient. Long practice of teaching is apt to wear out the powers of the most able. Considering the times, the elements of instruction were abundantly supplied. The bachelors were not permitted to do more than comment upon and expound the ancients, and their programme was furnished to them. The professors took the higher and more original branches; they alone could dogmatize from the great pulpit of the amphitheatre (ex superiore cathedrâ). The teaching embraced, according to the quaint phraseology of the day: 1. natural things, viz., anatomy and physiology; 2. non-natural things—hygiene and dietetics; 3. things contrary to nature—pathology and therapeutics. In the year 1634 a course of lectures on surgery, delivered in Latin, and exclusively for the medical students, was added—a practical course of surgery in French already existed for the barber apprentices; and the faculty began to perceive that if they would keep their supremacy over the barber-surgeons, it would be as well to know as much as their disciples.
The oath taken by the professors is remarkable, especially the exordium: "We swear and solemnly promise to give our lessons in long gowns with wide sleeves, having the square cap on our heads, and the scarlet scarf on our shoulders." This we see was their first duty. Their second engagement was to give their lessons uninterruptedly, and never by deputy, save in case of urgent necessity; each lecture to last an hour at least, and to be delivered daily, except in vacation time, which extended from the vigil of St. Peter and St. Paul, the 28th of June, to that of the exaltation of the cross, the 13th of September, and on festival days, which were pretty numerous, including also certain other solemnities, as well as the vigils of the greater feasts, when the schools were closed, causa confessionis, as the statutes have it.
Practical instruction was much more meagre than the oral, but this is hardly to be imputed as a fault. Anatomy cannot be learned except by dissection, and no bodies but those of criminals were procurable. The faculty had to look to crime to help on its progress in this study. When an execution took place, the dean received formal notice, and convoked the doctors and students on the occasion "to make an anatomy," as it was called. When the faculty was at peace with the surgeons, the latter were favored with an invitation. By a strange prejudice, theory and practice, as we have noticed, were kept distinct. The learned professor would have demeaned himself by becoming an operator, while the acting surgeon was condemned to be a mere intelligent machine, and was formally interdicted from being initiated in the higher mysteries of the profession. It was a barber who generally filled this inferior office, and he not unfrequently would display more knowledge than his masters; for which [{501}] offense he was sure to be severely reprimanded. "Doctor non sinat dissectorem divagari, sed contineat in officio dissecandi"—"Let not the doctor suffer the dissector to stray beyond his province, but keep him to his duty of dissecting." This is one of the rules laid down in the statutes. He was to work on and hold his tongue. But not only was the barber condemned to silence—a hard sentence, some will say, on one of his loquacious profession—but he was to receive no pay. For remuneration he was to look to his brethren of the razor. There were more facilities for the study of botany than for any other practical branch of the medical science. Beside the garden in the Rue de la Bûcherie, the doctors had afterward the use of the Jardin Royal founded by Richelieu; and these advantages do not seem to have been by any means neglected. Clinical instruction was peculiarly defective. Absorbed by erudition, philosophy, and the interminable disquisitions of the schools, our medical forefathers seem to have forgotten that experimental knowledge can be obtained only by the bedside of the sick. Most of the students had never seen a single patient before they reached the honors of the baccalaureate. After this they attached themselves to some doctor, whom they followed on his rounds, in order to learn the application of what they had theoretically mastered, and were by him introduced to his clients, much as was the practice in the days of ancient Rome. The poor sufferer's room was thus not unfrequently turned into a pedantic lecture-hall. We instinctively recall to mind Molière's two Diafoiruses, father and son, stationing themselves each on one side of the unhappy patient, and discoursing in pompous medical phraseology of the character of his pulse and of the humors of his body. [Footnote 71] The practical and, as such, the most important department of medical science received, it must be confessed, the least attention. All the prizes, whether of honor or emolument, which the future held out, tended to concentrate zeal and emulation on dialectics. It seemed as if the medical art were designed for the benefit of the doctors rather than the doctored, and that it was of more importance to be able to descant learnedly upon a malady than to cure it. To figure advantageously at one of those solemn public sittings of the medical body, which were often graced with the presence of members of the high aristocracy and of the magisterial body; to be able to deliver a brilliant harangue, and confound an opponent by a well-timed and well-chosen quotation—such was the highest ambition of the student. To preside with distinction over the discussion of a thesis—such was the battle-field on which the doctor hoped to win his laurels. If he acquitted himself with applause, he had gained a victory which raised him higher in his own esteem, and in that of the world at large, than the most successful practice of his profession could possibly do. The first two articles of the statutes contain this spirit in a condensed form, and may be regarded as the abridged decalogue of the faculty, summing up their duty toward God and toward man: 1. the divine offices shall be celebrated with the customary forms, and in the usual places, at the same hours and on the same days as heretofore; 2. the medical students shall frequently attend public disputations and dissertations.
[Footnote 71: "Duriuscule repoussant, et même un peu capricant." "L'intempérie de son parenchyme splénique et l'état de ses méats cholidoques. ">[
The process through which the student had to pass in order to make his way to his degree of licentiate was a trying ordeal. The examination for the bachelor's degree, after a few previous solemnities, including the usual attention first to religion, next to dress and formal state, lasted a week, during which the candidate might be questioned not only by the regular examiners on the usual round of the natural, the non-natural, and the unnatural, but by any doctor present, each having the right to propose a certain number of questions. In conclusion, the aspirant [{502}] had to comment on some aphorism of Hippocrates. When the examiners gave in their report, votes were taken, and a favorable majority, secured to the aspirant his degree. The new bachelors swore to keep the honorable secrets, and observe all the practices, customs, and statutes of the faculty; to pay homage to the dean and to all the masters; to aid the faculty against all opponents and all illicit practitioners, and to submit to the punishments which it might inflict; to assist in gown at all the masses ordered by the faculty, coming in at least before the epistle, and remaining till the end; and, finally, to assist at all the academic exercises and disputations of the schools during two years, where they were to maintain some theses on medicine or hygiene, observing good order and decorum in conducting their argument.
Their great ordeal was now to come. One is amazed to read of the succession of tilts they had to run in the intellectual tourney of these two probationary years; how from St. Martin to the Carnival they had to maintain, always in full dress and before a large assembly, their quodlibetary [Footnote 72] theses of physiology or medicine; how from Ash-Wednesday to vacation time it was the turn of the Cardinal theses, so called from their institution by Cardinal d'Estoutteville. These chiefly related to hygienic questions. It is from among these latter that most of those puerile and absurd queries have been extracted which have drawn down so much ridicule on the faculty. It is scarcely possible to imagine that such questions as the following can have been intended for serious discussion: Are heroes the children of heroes? Are they bilious? Is it good to get drunk once a month? Is woman an imperfect work of nature? Is sneezing a natural act? It is only fair, however, to remember that by far the greater number of the subjects proposed were of a very different character, and such as might profitably be considered at the present day. But if the frequent occurrence of these intellectual jousts was trying to the combatant, their interminable length was perfectly appalling. From six o'clock to eight he had to stand a preliminary skirmish with the bachelors. For the next three hours he had to encounter nine doctors, who successively entered the lists, each bringing his fresh vigor to bear on the exhausted candidate. The sitting ended with a general assault, in which all present had liberty to take a share and overwhelm the poor bachelor with a very hail-storm of interrogatories, to which he had to reply single-handed. During the Cardinal theses the debate was still hotter and more prolonged. From five in the morning till midday, the candidate was plied with questions by the bachelors, all ready to pounce upon him at the slightest flaw in his argument or the merest slip of his tongue. As a climax of cruelty, during the quodlibetary examinations he was bound to furnish his persecutors with refreshment in an adjoining apartment, of which he alone was forbidden to partake. The sound of the great clock striking twelve must have been a joyful reprieve to the athlete in the ring; the wonder is that any constitution could stand the probationary two years during which this process was energetically kept up.
[Footnote 72: So called because selected at pleasure.]