At the close of this period the candidates were subjected to private examination before the doctors, in order to ascertain their practical capacity and personal qualifications for exercising the medical art. Great strictness prevailed on all points which nearly concerned the honor and interests of the faculty; and if the candidate had ever practiced any manual art, including surgery, he was bound on oath to renounce it for the future. Then followed a separate private examination by each individual doctor as to a thousand personal details affecting the competence of the applicant. A secret scrutiny then decided on the admissibility, not as yet the admission, of [{503}] the candidates to the honors and privileges of actual members of the faculty. The spirit of the old days was preserved even in the seventeenth century, and the licentiates had to receive ecclesiastical sanction and a quasi-ordination. They proceeded accordingly in procession to the house of the chancellor of the academy, to whom they were presented by the dean, who, on their request, fixed a day for their reception. This form was one of the most cherished traditions of the university. Gallican as was the spirit of that body, it gloried in tracing its privileges and constitution to the Holy See; a cheap homage, which entailed no inconvenience, and of which at times it knew how to avail itself in its contests with the king and the parliament. The chancellor, who was a canon of the metropolitan see of Paris, had long enjoyed sovereign jurisdiction over the schools; and although in the seventeenth century his power was purely nominal, no one disputed his right upon this occasion to represent the sovereign Pontiff, the supreme teacher of the Catholic world. Other curious ceremonies attended the solemn admittal to the licentiate. All the high functionaries of state, and other important personages, were invited to attend the schools on an appointed day, in order to learn from the paranymph the names and titles of the medical practitioners whom the faculty were about to present to the city—nay, to the whole world: "Quos, quales, et quot medicos urbi, alque adeo universo orbi, medicorum collegium isto biennio sit suppeditaturum." The paranymph, as is well known, was, among the Greeks, the friend of the bridegroom, who accompanied him in his chariot when he went to fetch home the bride. Now it was held that the new licentiate was about to espouse the faculty, much as the Doge of Venice married the sea. The friend of the spouse, the paranymph, was in fact the dean, who presented the young spouses to the chancellor with a complimentary address. That dignitary invited the assembly to repair on a fixed day to the great archiepiscopal hall, which upon this occasion was thrown open to all the notabilities of the capital, who attended to add honor to the solemnity. Then the list of the candidates was read out in their order of merit, as previously decided after a strict inquiry by the doctors. They immediately fell on their knees, bareheaded, in an attitude of deep recollection, to receive the apostolic benediction given by the chancellor in these terms: "Auctoritate Sanctae Sedis Apostolicae, qua fungor in hoc parte, do tibi licentium legendi, interpretandi, et faciendi medicinam hic et ubique terrarum, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. " A question was then proposed by this dignitary to the licentiate first in the order of merit, who was bound to give proof of his competency by solving it on the spot. As the chancellor was not a doctor, and as the assembly was miscellaneous, this query was usually religious or literary, and, to judge from the recorded questions, rather curious and subtle than profitable. The whole assembly forthwith repaired in a body to the cathedral to thank our Blessed Lady for the happy conclusion of a work begun under her auspices. With his hand stretched over the altar of the martyrs, the chancellor murmured a short prayer, the purport of which was calculated to remind the newly-elected that, belonging henceforth as they did specially to the Church, they ought to be prepared to sacrifice themselves in all things, even to their very life: usque ad effusionem sanguinis. It depended entirely upon the licentiates themselves whether or no they were ultimately decorated with the doctor's cap, which conferred the full privileges at once of the medical corporation and of the university to which it belonged; and although a few, from modesty or other causes, declined to aim at this honor, with by far the greater number it was the consequence and complement of the licentiate. The degree of licentiate introduced the recipient to the public; [{504}] that of doctor admitted him into the very sanctuary of the faculty. Accordingly it was conferred, not less ceremoniously, but more privately. It was, so to say, a family affair. Although, as we have said, there was no further examination respecting medical competency, another minute inquiry was made into the life and morals of the applicant, which was followed, if the scrutiny proved satisfactory, by a preparatory act called the Vesperie, because it took place in the afternoon. At this sitting, the president addressed the candidate in a solemn discourse, intended to impress him with a high sense of the dignity of the healing art, and of the maxims of honor and probity which ought to guide its professors. The ordeal of questions was not altogether closed; for we find the president proposing a query, and entering into a discussion with the candidate, who had thus still something to undergo before he passed on from the class of the questioned to the more enviable rank of the questioners.
Upon the great day, the doctor in posse, preceded by the mace-bearers and bachelors, with the president on his left, and followed by the doctors in esse selected to argue with him, proceeded to the hall of the great school. The grand apparitor then addressed him thus: "Sir candidate for the doctorate, before you are initiated, you have to take three oaths,"—"Domine doctorande, antequam incipias, habes tria juramenta. " The three oaths were: 1. to observe the rights, statutes, laws, and venerable customs of the faculty; 2. to assist the day following the feast of St. Luke at the mass for deceased doctors; 3. to combat with all his strength against the illicit practitioners of medicine, whatever might be their rank or their condition in life. "Will you swear to observe these things?"—"Vis ista jurare?"—asked the grand apparitor; and the candidate replied with that memorable Juro ("I swear") which was Molière's last word. [Footnote 73] The president, after a brief address, turned toward him with the doctorial square cap in his hand, and making with it the sign of the cross in the air, placed it on the head of the candidate, to which he then administered a slight blow with two of his fingers, and forthwith bestowed upon him the accolade. The recipient was now duly dubbed doctor. He made immediate use of his new powers by asking a question of one of the doctors present. The president had then a tilt with the doctor who had presided at the Vesperie, and the sitting was closed by the new doctor's delivering a discourse of thanksgiving to God, to the faculty, and to his friends and relations present. The statutes enjoin that this speech should be elegant. We may conceive that the notion of elegance entertained by the faculty differed considerably from that which the word suggests to our minds. On the St. Martin's Day following the recently-chosen doctor did the honors of his new grade by presiding over a quodlibetary thesis. This was a sort of bye-day, being out of course. It was called the "acte pastillaire," in allusion probably to the sugary wafers presented to the dean stamped with his likeness, or to the bonbons, of which there was a general distribution on the occasion. The next day the new doctor was entered on the registers, and took his place on the junior bench for ten years.
[Footnote 73: The great comic dramatist played the part of Argan on the first representation of his play of the Malade Imaginaire, now always performed on the anniversary of his death. He had probably long had within him the seeds of a mortal complaint; and after pronouncing the word Juro in his character of Bachelor of Medicine taking his degree, which is the object of the famous ceremonial ballet succeeding the comedy, he was seized with a suffocating attack, and left the playhouse only to expire shortly afterward.]
Every one must be struck with the close resemblance which the famous ceremony in Molière's Malade Imaginaire bears to those scholastic solemnities. Who, indeed, would now remember these antiquated customs of an age from which we are drifting more rapidly in habits of thought and [{505}] in manners than even the stream of time is carrying us, if the comic dramatist had not conferred upon them the immortality of ridicule? Yet it may well be questioned if it were not for Molière's ludicrous picture, from which we have formed our notions and judgment of the old faculty, whether, did we now for the first time discover in some old forgotten document the record of these proceedings, our impression might not be widely different; whether we might not see as much in them to command our respect as to provoke us to laughter. Old-fashioned ways—that is, ways which no longer reflect the ideas and feelings of the day—always lend themselves specially to ridicule. In Molière's time society was beginning to divest itself of its mediaeval garb, and men's minds were being formed, not always to their advantage, on a new type. The old type, however, was so strongly impressed on the medical corporation—in which the traditionary spirit was peculiarly powerful—that the garb, which, as we know, follows rather than precedes a change, still sat naturally on the venerable body of doctors. So entirely was this the case, that where, as individuals, they were more or less under the influence of the Spirit of the day, in their professional capacity they had as it were a second self, clinging tenaciously in all that concerned the faculty to ancient ideas and forms. Of this combination the well-known Guy Patin, to whom we may hereafter have occasion to allude, was a curious example. It is difficult to look upon men performing acts, to them most serious, however absurd in our eyes, as purely ridiculous. Assuredly they have their respectable side. Neither is it easy to believe that all these good doctors, indefatigable as we have seen them, and enthusiastically devoted as they were to their calling, were all such pedantic idiots as Molière has painted them. It is a well-known fact that the inimitable piece of buffoonery to which we have alluded was concocted in the salon of Madame de la Sablière, a noted rendezvous of the "beaux esprits" of the day. Molière furnished the canvas and laid-in the colors of the first painting; but his witty friends had each some lively touch to contribute. It is probable that two or three of the medical profession—men who were more or less sceptical as to the perfection of every saying and doing of the faculty, and with whom Molière is known to have lived in habits of intimacy—were present at these meetings, and supplied many of the technical expressions. It does not follow that these physicians were actuated by any spite against their order, any more than Cervantes hated chivalry, to which, while quizzing its eccentricities and exaggerations, he unwittingly gave a fatal blow.
One remark forcibly suggests itself, when we consider the hyperbolical praise which the medical body so liberally administered to itself, and with which Molière has made us familiar in passages of his comedies which can scarcely be considered as caricatures. We are apt severely to censure as grossly servile and almost idolatrous the flattery with which the men of letters and courtiers of Louis XIV.'s reign dosed the monarch. But some abatement must be made of this harsh judgment when we find the reception of an obscure bachelor to his degree made the occasion of a prodigal expenditure of the most exaggerated metaphors. He is a new star, a pharos destined to shed its light on the latest posterity; he is the compendium of all virtue, talent, and glory; he equals, if he does not surpass, all the heroes of antiquity. And if such were the eulogies bestowed on a successful candidate for the honors of the faculty, what was the laudation reserved for the faculty itself, the source of all this splendor? Hyperbole went mad. We find, for instance, an orator taking as his text, "The physician is like to God." He sets forth this resemblance in the attributes of power, beneficence, mercy: physicians are [{506}] the ministers and the "colleagues" of God. But this is not enough. The orator kindles as he proceeds: all comes from God; ergo, evil as well as good. "But from you, medical gentlemen," he exclaims, "comes nothing but good. Doubtless God is just in afflicting us, and has his reasons. But still evil is evil, and medicine is always salutary." (Rather a bold assertion!) The conclusion is, that we should owe more to the physician than to God, seeing that, while the Lord wounds, the physician heals, did we not after all owe to him the physician himself.
One lost trait to complete this sketch of the old customs of the faculty. Molière has hinted at it in the closing line of the exordium of his comic president:
"Salus, honos, et argentum,
Atque bonum appetitum. "
The culinary and gastronomic side of the medical physiognomy is not the least curious. Brillat-Savarin, who has made a classified catalogue of gourmands, places physicians under the head of gourmands by virtue of their profession. It is, he says, in the nature of things. Everything contributes to make them gluttons. The hopes and the gratitude of patients combine to pamper them. They are crammed like pigeons, and at the end of six months have become irretrievable gourmands. There seem to be reasonable grounds for this accusation. In what may be called the heroic age of the faculty—the palmy days of medical ceremonial, which had already begun to decline in Molière's time, although the ancient forms were in the main preserved—corporation repasts were frequent. After every examination the doctors dined; after every thesis they dined—on this latter occasion at the expense of the successful candidate. On St. Luke's Day they dined; and again when the accounts were given in, and when a dean was elected. When a chair of botany was erected; a "botanic banquet" ensued as a matter of course. But it would be too tedious to enumerate all these feastings, since almost everything furnished the pretext for an entertainment. At one time, the faculty even officially appointed two of their number to taste the wines before their repasts. Under the pretence of hygienic considerations, questions appertaining to what may be styled transcendental cookery were of frequent occurrence; and it was gravely debated whether salad ought to be eaten at the first course, and potatoes at the second; whether it were good to eat nuts after fish, cheese after meat, etc.
We will conclude with some reflections of a more pleasing character as to the spirit which animated the old faculty. Some of its statutes are memorials of the virtuous principles which, in spite of all absurdities of form, were held in honor by their body. For instance, the doctors were enjoined to cultivate friendship with one another. They were never to visit a patient without an express invitation. The juniors were always to rise before the ancients, and the ancients were to protect the juniors, and treat them with kindness. The secrets of the sick were sacred; and no one was to reveal what he had seen, heard, or so much as suspected in a patient's house. Gravity, mildness, and decorum were to reign in their assemblies, where each was to speak in his proper order and without interrupting others. Disorderly behavior, recriminations, and abusive language are to be banished for ever from the faculty. These regulations are admirable; and at any rate bear witness to the sound views of the body of whose collective wisdom they were the expression. Indeed the great strength of the faculty resided in its attachment to its salutary moral laws. Mere formalism would never have possessed such vitality and endurance. When we penetrate into the life of this old society, we meet with a tone of genuine uprightness, manliness, and candor quite refreshing to the mind. We may add that [{507}] most of the great liberal professions—the bar, the magistracy, and the educational bodies of the seventeenth century—make the same favorable impression upon us. They exhibit the bourgeoisie of the day in a respectable light, as manifesting in no ordinary degree the qualities of probity, disinterestedness, and the family spirit, with all the sober virtues and homely charities which appertain to it.
We naturally know less of the life of the students; but it was probably moulded upon that of their elders and superiors. Even Molière's pompous Thomas Diafoirus, with whose rejection by Angélique for the handsome, rich, and agreeable Cléante the reader of course heartily sympathizes, is by no means a contemptible personage; and when divested of his priggish solemnity, and of all those ludicrous accidental qualities which go to make up the caricature, it cannot be denied that he is a well-principled, sober, and industrious youth. It is, therefore, no unreasonable conclusion to draw, that such was the general character of the body of aspirants to the honors of the venerable doctorate.