CHAPTER V.

LE SAGE. Le Sage draws a vivid picture of the medical practitioner of his day in his well-known work _Gil Blas_. Doctor Sangrado, bigoted, obstinate, and dominated by one idea, was doubtless very true to nature, and a type of physician not unfrequently met with even later than the seventeenth century. The character is supposed to have been drawn from that of Doctor Hecquet, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, a man extremely thin and spare in body, and who is said never to have drank anything but water. Le Sage describes his physician as “a tall, meagre, pale man, who had kept the shears of Clotho employed during forty years. He had a very solemn appearance, weighed his discourse, and gave an emphasis to his expressions: his reason was geometrical, and his opinions extremely singular.” All the city looked upon him as another Hippocrates. The licentiate Sedillo, a fat clerical epicurean, having fallen sick with the fever and gout, this great physician was called in, and after examining his patient delivered himself of the following diagnosis: “The business here is to supply the defect of obstructed perspiration; others in my place would doubtless prescribe saline draughts, diuretics, diaphoretics, and such medicines as abound with mercury and sulphur; but cathartics and sudorifics are pernicious drugs invented by quacks, and all the preparations of chemistry are only calculated to do mischief,” said this disciple of Æsculapius. “You must renounce all palatable food; and do you drink wine?” “Yes,” said the poor canon; “wine and water.” “Oh! watered as much as you please,” replied the physician: “what an irregularity is here! what a frightful regimen! You ought to have been dead long ago. If you had drunk nothing but pure water all your life, and had been satisfied with simple nourishment, such as, for example, boiled apples, peas, and beans, you would not now be tormented with gout, and all your limbs would perform their functions with ease.” The poor canon promised to obey in all these things, but the doctor hadn’t finished yet, for he sent for a surgeon, and ordered him to let “six good porringers of blood as the first effort” to supply the want of perspiration. “And return in three hours, and take as much more, and repeat the same to-morrow,” said this veritable leech to the surgeon, “for a patient cannot be bled too much.” Besides this, the unfortunate patient was dosed incessantly with warm water, two or three pints in as many draughts, “for,” said the physician, “water is the true specific in all distempers what-ever”. Little wonder that in less than two days, Gil Blas tells us, the old canon was reduced to the last extremity, and soon after breathed his last, much to the regret of the physician, who declared it was because he had not lost blood enough, nor drank a sufficient quantity of water. The mercurial Gil Blas shortly after took service with this learned medico, and kept his books, which he declares might have been with great justice styled a register of the dead; for almost all the people whose names it contained died soon afterwards. But after being about a week with the physician, Gil Blas was seized with a cramp which he attributed to the quantity of the “universal dissolvent” he was compelled to imbibe, and had to consult his master. “Why, truly, Gil Blas, I am not at all surprised that thou dost not enjoy good health,” said the hydropathist. “Thou dost not drink enough, my friend. Water taken in small quantities serves only to disentangle the particles of the bile, and give them more activity, whereas they should be drowned in a copious dilution. I will warrant the consequence, and if thou wilt not take my word, Celsus himself shall be thy security.” It need hardly be wondered at that Gil Blas soon came to believe that he also had a natural talent for the medical profession, which was so easy to acquire and lucrative to practise, and was rapidly promoted as assistant to his master. “Listen, my child,” said the doctor one day, “I will immediately disclose to thee the whole extent of that salutary art which I have professed so many years. Know, my friend, all that is required is to bleed thy patients and make them drink warm water. This is the secret of curing all the distempers incident to man. I have nothing more to impart; thou knowest physic to the very bottom.” Thus the _ci-devant_ valet soon robed himself in a physician’s gown and long _perruque_, then went forth to practise, but resolved to drink wine every day, of which he said he drank huge draughts, and (no disparagement to the Roman oracle) “the more I filled my stomach, the less did that organ complain of the injury it received”. So he bled and watered the community. But the time soon came when this young practitioner met with a reverse. When called in to consultation with a Spanish doctor of another school, a dispute arose on the subject of the water-cure, which ended in a pitched battle being fought between the rival medicos over the unfortunate patient, and they were not separated until each had lost a handful of hair. This ended in the discharge of Gil Blas, who immediately took the opportunity of imbibing a considerable quantity of wine at the first tavern he came across, and returned to his patron in a condition of considerable elevation. The wine having made him thirsty, he consumed a large quantity of water while telling his story. “I see, Gil Blas, thou hast no longer an aversion to water,” said the physician. “Heaven be praised! thou drinkest it now like nectar! a change that does not at all surprise me, my friend.” “Sir,” replied Gil Blas, “there’s a time for all things; I would not at present give a pint of water for a hogshead of wine.” That Le Sage had a very poor opinion of the professors of the art of medicine in his time may be gathered from the following conversation which Gil Blas holds with his employer: “Scarcely a day passed in which we did not visit eight or ten patients each, from whence it may be easily conceived what a quantity of blood was spilt and water drank. But I do not know how it happened, all our sick died. We very seldom had occasion to make three visits to one patient; at the second we were either told that he had just been buried, or we found them at the last gasp; and as I was but a young physician who had not yet had time to be inured to murder, I began to be very uneasy at the fatal events which might be laid to my charge.” And so he at last gave it up, after being threatened with his life by a gallant, whose wife had succumbed to his drastic treatment. Towards the close of the story Gil Blas has an interview with his former master, who describes to his old pupil the change that had taken place in the practice of medicine in a few years, which forms an interesting account of the transition through which the medical art was passing towards the end of the seventeenth century. “Ah, my son,” says the worthy doctor, “what a change has happened in physic within these few years. There are in this city, physicians, or such as call themselves so, who are yoked to the triumphal car of antimony—_currus triumphalis antimonii_. Truants from the school of Paracelsus, adorers of kermes, accidental curers who make the whole science of medicine consist in knowing how to prepare chymical drugs. What shall I tell you! Everything is turned topsy-turvey in their method. Bleeding at the foot, for example, hitherto so seldom practised, is now almost the only bleeding in use. Those purgatives which were formerly gentle and benign are now changed for emetics and kermes. “I published a book against this brigandage of medicine, but it was no use. The surgeons, mad with ambition of acting as physicians, think themselves sufficiently qualified when there is nothing to be done but to give kermes and emetics, to which they add bleeding at the foot, according to their own fancy. They even proceed so far as to mix kermes in apozems and cordial potions; and so they are on a par with your celebrated prescribers. This contagion has spread also among the cloisters. There are some monks who act both as apothecaries and surgeons. These apes of medicine apply themselves to chemistry, and compose pernicious drugs, with which they abridge the lives of the reverend fathers.” The doctor describes the dawn of pharmacy in France and Spain, which was first practised by the surgeons who became surgeon-apothecaries. The use of emetics in medical treatment came largely into vogue in 1658. It is said that the life of Louis XIV. was saved by an emetic administered by Dusausoi, in opposition to the opinion of Vallot, the chief physician to the king.