The battle about antimony raged still more fiercely, inasmuch as the question admitted of less tangible proof. There is a legend that this mineral was first exhibited in a pure state and applied to medical purposes by Basil Valentine, a Benedictine monk of Erfurt, in the beginning of the sixteenth century; he gave it to his hogs, who throve marvellously. This is to be attributed to the arsenic contained in the drug, which fattens when taken in small quantities—a fact well known to the peasants of Styria and Lower Austria. Basil next gave it to his monks, who fell sick; from which he drew the following conclusion: "This metal suits hogs; it does not suit monks." Hence its name of antimony. Thirty years later Paracelsus took up the study of antimony, and endeavored to introduce its use, with that of other minerals, in medicine. This would have been to break completely with tradition; but Paracelsus was half-cracked, and not very intelligible. The sixteenth century was the age of alchemy, especially in Germany, where it was ardently pursued, in connection with the occult sciences, by men who rivalled Paracelsus in obscurity. In France transcendental chemistry found less favor, and there was early a split between the pseudo-mystics and the chemists. The former cultivated astrology; but astrology, as an aid to medicine, had quite fallen into disrepute in the seventeenth century, being abandoned to low vagabond quacks. Chemistry, however, was making gradual progress and striving to establish its place in medicine. The sympathy manifested for this science at Montpellier was quite enough to indispose toward it the faculty of Paris. The absurd blunders into which its association with alchemy had betrayed it in times past weighed also on its reputation; but, above all, the contempt for antiquity manifested by its adepts was calculated to condemn it in the eyes [{689}] of the majority of the physicians, brought up as they were in reverence for all that chemistry pretended to reform or destroy.
There were not wanting, however, conciliatory spirits, who strove to effect a compromise between the past and the present, and make room for the new chemical theories in the received system. It has already been observed how Galen's theory of the humors of the body had been elaborated: all medical language was grounded upon it. [Footnote 105] Disease was the result of the vitiation of these humors, each humor having its special morbid product. To expel this vitiated humor was the task of the doctor; but why might not minerals be added to his pharmacopoeia, without interfering with his principles? This seemed reasonable; and as a matter of theory the faculty were not unwilling to let it pass. The difference arose on the practical question. All were agreed that the peccant humor was to be expelled; but the faithful followers of Hippocrates attached great importance to awaiting what was called the coction of the humors. This was the work of nature, which was employed in making an effort which the physician was called only to second,—an effort of which fever was but the symptom. It was esteemed a very nice point to hit off the proper moment, and not prevent or disturb the crisis which was thus preparing: hence the need of mild measures. Whoever will refer to the apothecary's bill in the first scene of Molière's Malade Imaginaire will see that lenifying, softening, tempering, and refreshing, were the avowed objects of the drugs administered. Such was Hippocratic medicine; mild, at least, in theory. We must make one exception as respects bleeding: these enemies of violent measures bled with a vengeance; they shed torrents of blood. They bled old men of eighty, and babies two months, nay, even two days old; and this "without inconvenience,"—so they said. We presume some of the sufferers survived,—thanks to a strong constitution. Riolan says that there are twenty-four pounds of blood in the human body, and that twenty can be lost without causing death; ergo, it is keeping within very reasonable bounds to deprive a man of only the half of his blood. [Footnote 106]
[Footnote 105: M. Raynaud, to whose amusing work we are again largely indebted, notices that much of this language still survives in the diction of the common people. Many of their ideas and forms of expression still reflect the old doctrine of humorism; just as they have retained many words and idioms now become obsolete in the upper and more shifting strata of society.]
[Footnote 106: The famous Guy de la Brosse refused to be bled. He called bleeding the remedy of sanguinary pedants, and said he would rather die then submit to the operation. "And he did die," says M. Basalis, a brother doctor; adding, "The devil will bleed him in the next world, has such a rascal and unbeliever deserves." Such are the imprecations hurled at the man who ventured on refusing to die in proper form. Could Molière have written anything more sublimely comic?]
The object of bleeding, of course, was the expulsion of the vitiated humors supposed to be contained in it; but it is hardly reconcilable with the doctrine of waiting for their coction to commence operations by attacking a disease at once with a lancet. But this is one of Guy Patin's primary convictions, as well as of numbers of his brethren, and they conscientiously acted on the same. It was otherwise as respected emetics. Antimony administered in the potent quantities then used was a most frightful emetic. No one in those days thought of giving infinitesimal doses, or suspected that what was poisonous in large, might be salutary in fractional, proportions. It was reserved for Rasoni to discover that antimony could be thus beneficially administered. And so the whole question lay between those who held as a principle that the peccant humor was not to be expelled till after coction, and those who maintained that the sooner the morbific matter was ejected from the system the better.
It is true that the horrible prostration of strength consequent on this summary process was sufficient to alarm men's minds, and furnish a reasonable topic to the opponents of [{690}] antimony. The quarrel occupied a whole century; of course we cannot attempt to go into even its most elementary details. In 1566, the parliament prohibited the use of this drug. The year 1666 saw it rehabilitated by the same body. The motive of the first decree was the report of the faculty that antimony was an incorrigible poison. The idea, as we just now observed, that diminution of quantity might effect what was unattainable by correctives, did not occur to the medical mind of that day. In 1615 there was a fresh unanimous decree against antimony, also indorsed by parliament; but the scientific world was still on the search for a corrective, and converts, or perverts, were being secretly made within the very sanctuary of the faculty. In 1638, the dean, Hardoun de Saint-Jacques, suddenly published an incomplete pharmaceutic codex, which had been in course of preparation for twelve years. In this dictionary antimonial wine actually figured in its alphabetical place. How had the enemy contrived to creep into the citadel? No one could say. This incident was the occasion of a deluge of pamphlets, of which the very form and language are, for the most part, like a dead letter to us. Hippocrates, Holy Scripture, history, and the fathers, are all called into court. Even the definition of antimony gives rise to much discussion; and it is gravely argued whether Adam, when conferring names in Paradise, named this drug, and if so, what he called it. Even the troubles of the Fronde did not check this medical civil war. Antimony had quite a literature of its own. Guy Patin, of course, was inimical, but a little cautious while the question of his deanship was impending. Afterward he launches out; he hates chemistry, he hates antimony, he hates Guénaut, who is its warm advocate, and is beside Cardinal Mazarin's physician (Guy Patin is always in political opposition). Guénaut, he says, has poisoned his wife, daughter, and two sons-in-law with this drug; at last he poisons himself, and dies a martyr to his infatuation. And then the faculty have twice condemned antimony. That is more than enough for Guy Patin. However, a great event turned the balance in his favor. During the campaign of 1658, the king, then twenty years of age, was attacked by typhus. Valot had been absent a few days, sent by Louis, as the journal tells us, to settle a quarrel between the physicians and surgeons who were treating the Maréchal de Castelnau for a mortal wound—poor marshal! He hastened back to his master, and fell to work vigorously, sparing neither bleeding nor dosing; but the king got worse, and Guénaut was sent for. The court-physicians—Valot, Esprit, Daquin, Yvelin, beside a local doctor—were all there disputing over the monarch's sinking body. A great consultation is now held, presided over by the cardinal; and he votes for antimony. It was given. The king took an ounce, and marvellous are the recorded effects. However, whether in consequence or in spite of the dose, he recovered. Louis was at that time his people's darling and idol; they adored their young monarch, and he had been saved by Guénaut and antimony! Guy Patin's embarrassment at this crisis is a little ludicrous. The dose, he urges in extenuation, was small; but he concludes that, after all, what saved the king "was his innocence, his youth and strength, nine good bleedings, and the prayers of good people like himself and others." Defections now became numerous, and the faculty was in a false position. In fact, most of the doctors gave antimony in spite of the two decrees, the last of which interdicted the mention of it. In 1666 the embargo was finally removed, after a tedious and ponderous process, as were all processes in those days, before the parliament; and the doctors were henceforth permitted "to give the said emetic wine for the cure of maladies, to write and dispute about it,"' etc., but it was not lawful for persons to take it [{691}] without their advice. The question had been decided in the faculty by ninety-two doctors against ten. The decree came to sadden the last days of Guy Patin, and of a few more respectable old stagers, who were unable to advance with their age.
But this internal conflict was not the only one which the faculty had to sustain. There was the perennial dispute with the surgeons. Surgery and medicine are twin sciences, if they be not rather branches of one and the same. Hippocrates, Galen, Celsus, made no practical distinction between them; nevertheless, they came to be entirely separated in mediaeval practice. Two causes may be assigned for this: the first was the quasi-ecclesiastical character of the medical profession in early days, which rendered the shedding of blood and other operations incompatible with the position of men who were either clerics or bound by clerical rules. Still, though they could not themselves draw blood, they could prescribe blood-letting and other sanguinary operations; and this led, of course, to the existence of another class, paid to carry out their orders. But a second and far more enduring cause was the strong prejudice existing in feudal times against manual labor as degrading. In vain might the surgeons urge that it was absurd to regard as merely mechanical an occupation which necessitated much scientific knowledge. The university shared the feelings of the faculty on this point; and while admitting the doctors into its fellowship, rejected the surgeons. Excluded from this fraternity of liberal science, the surgeons gave themselves diligently to professional study. As early as the fourteenth century we meet with their celebrated confraternity, placed under the patronage of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, which boasted of its foundation by St. Louis, and which maintained its existence for five centuries. The quarrel with the doctors began in the middle of the fifteenth century, and terminated only on the eve of the Revolution, when St. Cosmas's College and the faculty were both alike to share the universal shipwreck of all the ancient institutions.
The surgeons had long been in the habit of availing themselves of the aid of the barbers in certain ordinary operations, and bleeding was at last entirely abandoned to their hands. Just, however, as the faculty wished to depress the surgeons, and the latter were desirous to raise themselves to an equality with the faculty, so also the surgeons were resolved to keep down their servants the barbers, who, on their part, aspired to rise in the professional scale. The policy of the faculty was to foster their rivalry, and thus keep a check upon both; but as the nearest enemy is always the most dreaded, the time came when it was judged prudent to elevate the barbers, whose very inferiority rendered them less obnoxious, in order the better to make head against the surgeons; and so the faculty adopted the barbers, in whom it hoped to find docile clients, in order to mortify its unsubmissive children. It magnificently compared this measure to the call of the Gentiles and rejection of ungrateful Israel. But the barbers held their heads up now, and requested to study anatomy. Here was a difficulty. University regulations strictly enjoined that all public lessons should be in Latin; but what was the use of talking Latin to barbers? So the lecture was to be in Latin, and the explanation in French. Apparently to facilitate the comprehension of the classic tongue by the unlearned, the use of that whimsical Latin which Molière has so happily caricatured then first began. A clever compromise was now supposed to have been effected. A doctor was to teach in the amphitheatre of the faculty without touching the body; a surgeon was to dissect; the barbers were to be present, and try to understand. This was in 1498.
Further concessions followed; and in 1505 the faculty allowed the barbers to be inscribed on the dean's [{692}] register, and, after passing through an examination, to be formally received as scholars. They paid, however, for their lessons, and took an oath never to prescribe an internal remedy, but to have recourse to the doctors for the medical treatment of their patients. On these conditions the proudest of scientific corporations extended its protection to, and even took into a certain fellowship, a profession not only humble, but so much despised, that in Germany at that period barbers were not admitted into any trade corporation. The credit of the king's barber—an important personage, who enjoyed familiar opportunities for asking favors—had something perhaps to say to the prosperity of this trade in France. And the barbers continued to prosper; it was their interest, indeed, to keep well with the faculty, whose protecting hand once withdrawn, they would helplessly fall back under the cruel bondage of their old masters. But as time went on, they grew confident. The troubles of the League unhinged society, and for some years we find them neglecting to take the oath of fidelity. Meanwhile surgery had attained a proud position, and at the end of the sixteenth century was much in advance of the other sciences, both in its spirit of independent inquiry and in experimental practice.
Many eminent names illustrate its annals at this period. At the head of the corporation was Ambroise Paré, the restorer—we might almost say the creator—of modern surgery. He had been a barber's boy in his youth, and still treated his old associates with much consideration. Perhaps this honorable notice helped to turn their heads a little, for they actually began to set up school for themselves, and to maintain theses. This got them a snub from the faculty, and a prohibition from parliament, which recalled to their recollection the ancient statute which permitted their intervention only "pro furunculis, bocchiis, et apostumatibus. " But the time was past for enforcing such laws; every day the barbers more and more emancipated themselves from thraldom; and in 1629 they obtained the right of having their receptions presided over by the king's barber or by his lieutenant.