Page:All the Year Round - Series 1 - Volume 9.djvu/146

138 [April 4, 1863.) ALL THE YEAR ROUND, [Conducted by duties. As the representative of all who were attacked, he was obliged, by his oath, to prosecute every attempt made by the enemies of the Faculty to abridge its privileges or lower its dignity, and consequently he was always in hot water. Indeed, it rarely happened that the dean for the time being had not half a dozen lawsuits on his hands, so numerous and so vindictive were the foes of the institution. The first duty enjoined on the professors when they took the oath of office was as follows: "We solemnly swear and promise," they said, "to deliver our lectures in long robes with full sleeves, with the square cap on our heads, and the scarlet hood on our shoulders," and the conscientious men not only felt that they should be committing perjury if they costumed themselves differently, but that their teaching would be valueless without these insignia. This teaching was, for the most part, theoretical; clinical lectures being of the rarest occurrence, and anatomical demonstration entirely out of their line. It is true that subjects were very scarce, as only the bodies of criminals were allowed to be dissected; but when the opportunity arrived to "faire une anatomie," it was held to be beneath the dignity of a professor to descend to manual operations, which were consigned to the barber-surgeons, and—meanly enough—without a fee. In the room of clinical lectures, the young student derived his knowledge, as well as he could from. discussions, such as Molière made an example of in that scene in the Malade Imaginaire, where Doctor Diafoirus and his son Thomas, seated by the bedside of their patient, Argan, take each of them one of his arms, and then discourse on his pulse. "Now, Thomas," says the elder Diafoirus, "quid dicis?" "Dico," replies Thomas, "that Monsieur's pulse is the pulse of a man who is not in good health." "Good!" observes the father; and the dialogue continues in an equally edifying strain. From such interview the student was expected to learn clinical medicine. What he did learn was how to conduct himself when he also became a doctor.

That which the faculty entirely lost sight of in their discussions was the patient himself, their thoughts being only given to the abstract nature of his disease. Argument, not investigation, was their great object. All they sought was an antagonist, and their delight was a sort of intellectual tournament. On public days, when theses were argued in the presence of the whole medical world, on which occasions great personages were often present, they were in their element. To speak fluently, reply with ease, and crush an adversary by an appropriate quotation, kept carefully in reserve until the moment arrived for using it with effect, constituted their highest ambition. Those theses called "quodlibétaires," that is to say, on any chosen subject of physiology or medicine, afforded scope for a fine display of intellectual capacity. Take these for examples: Are heroes born heroes? Are they bilious? Is it good to get drunk once a month? Is a woman an imperfect work of nature? Is sneezing a natural-act? Are bastards cleverer than legitimate children? Should you reckon the age of the moon before having your hair cut?—and so forth. On subjects of this kind the discussions often lasted from six in the morning till noon, and the order of battle was as follows: The bachelors of medicine opened fire, offering arguments in turn for two hours to the candidate for admission. After these preliminary skirmishes, nine doctors, designated ad hoc, advanced, and did their utmost to bewilder and discomfort him for the space of three mortal hours. Finally, the sitting was brought to a close with a general assault, from eleven o’clock till twelve, during which time every one present had the right to shower down questions on the head of the solitary, luckless recipiendary. The cardinal theses were even worse than these, for they lasted an hour longer, and every bachelor was bound to put two questions to the candidate, who, to add to his misfortunes, was at the expense of supplying his tormentors with wine and refreshments, which were served in an adjoining apartment. Two years were consumed in these exercises, and then the Bachelor was allowed to go in for the examination which was to make him a Licentiate; but, however well he might have passed, he was not admitted to that dignity until he had absolutely renounced the unworthy occupation of surgery. Had he at any time sinned in this matter, or exercised "any other manual art," he was compelled, not only to take an oath of renunciation, but to sign a bond to that effect before a notary; "for," said the statutes, "it is necessary to preserve in all its purity and integrity the dignity of the medical body." The final ceremony in which the licentiates figured before the day of solemn institution, was that of proceeding in a body with the newly elected bachelors, to request the attendance at the schools of the principal officers of the parliament and courts of law, and other high civic functionaries, that they might learn from the paranymph the names and titles of the doctors whom the faculty were about to present to the city and to the whole universe ("urbe atque universo orbi"). What the paranymph was, must be explained. At the marriage solemnities of the Greeks it was the custom for a young man, a friend of the bridegroom, to mount with him in the same chariot at the moment when he conducted the bride to the conjugal mansion. Hence his name,. Now, according to the spirit of the time, the new licentiate was about to espouse the Faculty, much in the same way as the Doges of Venice espoused the Adriatic, and the paranymph, whom we should call the "best man," was the dean in person. This quasi-marital functionary having performed his office on the day appointed, a series of questions in Latin, with about as much sense in them as those previously cited, was proposed and answered, and then the whole assemblage betook itself to the cathedral to thank the Virgin for the assistance she had rendered in smoothing the way to this arduous reception, Then, with his hand extended above the martyr's altar, the