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