He had, besides, the brevet of councillor of state,
received the salary, and wore the costume of the
office on occasions of ceremony. When he
attended the meetings of the Faculty he was
met at the door by the dean, the bachelors,
and the beadles, even without being himself a
doctor of Paris. But the most serious privilege
of his post was his judicial authority over the
exercise of medicine and pharmacy throughout
the kingdom. He it was who directly
named, in every city, the experimental surgeons
who made official reports: appointments that
were much sought after, and, where the first
physician was not over-scrupulous, often
heavily paid for. This sale of places was a
common feature of the time, and the very one
that Valot held was purchased by him of
Cardinal Mazarin for thirty thousand crowns—
about eight thousand pounds of our money. At
the period when Valot bought this post, Bouvard,
the first physician to the late king, Louis the
Thirteenth, was still alive. He was one of the
greatest fanatics of his art that ever lived. It
is related of him that, in a single year, he
inflicted on his royal master no fewer than two
hundred and fifteen doses—two hundred and
twelve of those applications which Molière
makes us laugh at—and forty-seven blood-
lettings, after which it is not to be wondered at
that Louis the Thirteenth was of pale
complexion. In his leisure moments he cultivated
the Muses, after his fashion, and there exists a
medical and anatomical poem of his, intituled:
Description de la Maladie, de la Mort, et de la Vie
de Madame la Duchesse de Mercœur, in which
he versifies the process of dissection, and enters
into every conceivable technical detail. Louis the
Fourteenth, who was fond of regularity in all
things, ordered Valot to make a journal of his
health, which was continued by the physician's
successors. The Journal de la Santé du Roi,
a fine folio manuscript, magnificently bound, and
covered with fleur-de-lys, is preserved in the
Imperial Library of Paris, and has lately been
published. It is entirely in the handwriting
of Valot, Daguin, and Fagon. Everything
relating to the temperament or ailments of the
king is there scrupulously set down, commencing
with his infancy, but it suddenly stops in 1711,
four years before Louis the Fourteenth's death,
probably because it was no longer possible to
conceal from the monarch that he also was
mortal. Valot begins his journal with an
account of the small-pox, from which the king
suffered in 1647. He did not then hold the
highest medical rank, but was called in to
consult with Guénaut and others; he advised
bleeding—a recommendation which was warmly
opposed by the majority present, but nevertheless
adopted by Vautier, the first physician, and
it is, perhaps, in allusion to the dispute on this
occasion that Molière makes Tomès say: "If
you do not immediately bleed my daughter, she
is a dead person," while Desfonandrès replies:
"If you bleed her, she will not be alive in a
quarter of an hour."

The king survived the treatment, and Valot,
in a truly courtier-like spirit, makes this entry:
"During this dangerous sickness the king's
conduct caused us justly to entertain the highest
expectations from his courage, showing as he
did at the age of eight years the utmost patience
and firmness in the midst of all his sufferings."
He also pays himself a compliment, praising
Vautier for his great prudence in having called
in the Sieurs Guénaut and Valot, "who gave
ample proof of their capacity, and showed to all
France how necessary their skill and intelligence
were in a crisis so desperate and deplorable."
Valot soon afterwards succeeded Vautier, and
no longer writing of himself in the third person,
addressed a memoir to the king on his temperament,
which he inserted in the journal and signed
with his own name. He there very clearly
demonstrated that his majesty was born with
the temperament of which heroes are made, and
counselled him, among other things, to make use
of his virtue to resist the excesses of youth—
a piece of advice which the king forgot to follow.
Valot describes his remedies as things "inspired
by Heaven," for the preservation of a health so
precious as that of his majesty, and gives a prominent
place in the most conspicuous hand-writing
to the "Potions," "Plasters," and other medicaments,
the use of which he enjoins. Valot was
much addicted to prognostications, and prided
himself greatly on the truth of those he offered.
At the beginning of every year he predicted the
sickness that would be current in it. As long as
he was right he continued to do so, but in 1669
he left off the practice, assigning this reason: "I
have resolved to insert nothing more of the kind
in this work, envious persons asserting that I
make my predictions after the event."

During the greater part of the seventeenth
century, a grand discovery and a valuable medicine
were two great causes of strife in the
medical world. The first was the circulation of
the blood, the second the use of antimony. In
1673 the truth of Harvey's discovery was
officially recognised in France, and Molière gave
its antagonists the coup de grace, in the Malade
Imaginaire, where he makes Diafoirus the elder
praise his son in these words: "What particularly
pleases me in him is, that he blindly attaches
himself to the opinions of the ancients, and has
never been willing to comprehend or listen to
the reasons and experiences of the pretended
discoverers of the present century, concerning
the circulation of the blood, and other opinions
of the same kidney."

Antimony gained the day somewhat sooner. In
the course of the campaign of 1658, the king,
who was then twenty years of age, fell grievously
sick at Mardyck, and was removed to Calais.
The Journal de Santé, then edited by Valot,
gives full particulars of his illness, which was a
strongly marked typhoid fever. Blood-letting
and purging were actively resorted to, but the
patient got worse, and the seventh day passed
without bringing the expected crisis. Matters
became serious; all the court physicians were
summoned; and, in addition, an obscure practitioner
of Abbeville, named Du Saussoy, who,