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LETTRES DE GUI PATIN. Nouvelle Edition augmentée de Lettres Inédites, et precedée d'une Notice Biographique. Par J. H. Reveillé-Parise, Docteur en Medecine, &c.

Letters of Guy Patin. A new Edition, augmented by Inedited Letters, and preceded by a Biographical Notice. By J. H. Reveillé-Parise, M.D. Three volumes, 8vo, pp. 1974. Paris,

1846.

GUY PATIN may claim a foremost place in a department of literature-the difficult art of letter-writing-in which his countrymen have attained an acknowledged superiority; and the only regret we feel at the conclusion of our perusal of the portion of his voluminous correspondence here presented to us by M. Parise, arises from the fact of its termination having been reached, and our conviction that, take what pains we may, we can only present our readers with a very inadequate idea of its interesting characteristics. Translation may be undertaken by the practised hand in the case of didactic or narrative literature with the assurance of an accurate, and even an elegant, execution; but when vivid pictures of men and manners, dashed off in a few lines of happy but idiomatic phraseology, are attempted to be thus transferred, they are apt to lose all their original brilliancy, and even become distorted by the different refracting power of the medium of transmission. Thus it is that attempts at the adequate rendering of the various celebrated French letter-writers have always proved marked failures-washy pointless productions being substituted for the elegance and vivacity of the originals. We may, however, indicate to our readers what they will find by referring themselves to these volumes, and can assure them that the various scenes therein depicted by the ever-active writer are endowed with a life-like energy that at once transports us to the scene of action, mingles us with the throng of events, forcibly impresses the imagination, and conveys a more accurate idea of the manners of the epoch than volume upon volume of history written for the express purpose could impart.

Guy Patin was born, in 1601, in the province of Picardy. His father was an Advocate, but, being tempted by the inducements held out by the Seigneur of his village, he left Paris, where he was endeavouring to acquire practice, and established himself as a kind of steward or superintendent of that gentleman's estate. The promises which had been made him not having been fulfilled, his circumstances always continued very limited. Guy often refers to the excellent moral character his father bore with becoming pride. 'My father," says he, "was a good man if ever there was one. If every one was like him we should have little need of lawyers. He came to Paris annually on his master's business, and his credit was always excellent. I found, on my arrival there, numbers of friends whom I knew nothing of, but who loaded me with kindness on his account, which has made me many a time deplore his loss more and more." His father gave him a good preliminary classical education, and as soon as he had left college, some of the nobility of the district, who had become indebted to his

father and were desirous of paying him by what cost them nothing, offered him a living for his son: but Guy, with a spirit which seemed to foreshadow his future energetic opinions upon the subject, "flatly refused it, protesting absolutely I would never become a priest; blessed be God for so impressing my mind at so early an age. My father recognising in this refusal something good and ingenuous, was in no-wise irritated by it; but my mother continued exasperated against me for more than five years." Referring to the subject some forty years after, in a letter to a friend, he says, I have oftentimes praised God that he never made me either a woman, a priest, a Turk, or a Jew."

The anger of his mother caused him to leave his home, and he came to Paris to continue his studies. What his resources were he mentions not, but Bayle tells us he supported himself as a corrector of the press, Drelincourt, Professor of Medicine at Leyden, having taught him this. "We must not be surprised," says M. Parise," at Patin choosing such a profession to gain a livelihood. At this period, as well as in the preceding century, it was the occupation of many distinguished men of letters, and especially of Erasmus and his friend Budæus. It sometimes happened that a philosopher printed in the morning that which he had written the night before." While so occupied, however, he fell in with the celebrated Riolan, who induced him to study medicine, and in 1627 he received his Doctor's degree, which effectually appeased the ire of his mother. He soon acquired reputation and practice, and having married a rich wife was henceforth placed at his ease in regard to pecuniary concerns. His practice also rapidly augmented, and Riolan, having quarrelled with his son, obtained for Patin the reversion of the professor's chair he held in the college of France, to which he did not succeed however until 1654.

He was not the man to vegetate in wealthy ease, or to pursue his profession as a mere lucrative calling. On the contrary, his activity was prodigious and usefully directed in the main. As was the custom of the period, he entered into a voluminous epistolary correspondence with the learned in various parts of Europe. He accumulated a large library of valuable books, which he not only read but commented upon with great critical acumen. He delivered lectures to crowded auditories, and joined in or presided over the disputation of theses with a zest and erudition which even the learning of that epoch exhibited few examples of. Thoroughly imbued with the conviction of the dignity of the medical art, and of the superiority of the scholastic and Galenical mode of acquiring and practising it, he was in continual war with the charlatans, the chemists, the apothecaries, the barber-surgeons, and the hosts of unqualified practitioners of the day. A warm sympathizer in the cruel sufferings the masses of his countrymen were subjected to by the oppressions of the priesthood and noblesse, and by the corruption which pervaded all society from the Court downwards, many of his letters are occupied in stigmatizing the authors and causes of these, evincing an amount of information which the most active intercourse with general society could alone furnish him with. Notwithstanding his extensive town-practice, and his being frequently called away from Paris (journies he always bitterly complains of as tearing him away from his beloved books), he could still find time to direct his son's or his pupils' studies, to expound some passage of Galen or Fernel to them,

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and to endeavour to impress upon them the elevated objects and the responsibilities of the profession they had chosen.

He was a man of strong feelings and prejudices, and the manners of his times permitted the giving currency to these in terms which the more subdued temper of our own has properly discountenanced. A withering sarcasm, a great facility of expression, whether in Latin or French, an utter carelessness of wounding the feelings of those attacked, must have rendered him indeed a formidable enemy; and nothing can be happier than many of his sarcastic allusions and cutting epigrams. But if he was a fierce opponent, no mean or personal considerations prompted his enmity. He neither manifests anxiety for lucre or jealousy at the legitimate success of brotherpractitioners. On the contrary, he refused appointments which would have torn him from his books and other associations, and mentions with eager delight the instances of good fortune which befel his friends and colleagues. The bitter reviler of Cardinal Mazarin and the Jesuits, the harsh antagonist of the lower grades of the profession in their laudable efforts to raise their position, the cordial hater of the chemists and charlatans of the day, expresses with admirable pathos his sympathy for the miseries under which his country groaned, was a doating though not a foolish father, and could drop a tear when a beloved colleague or favourite author left this mortal scene. His friendships once formed seemed immutable by time and circumstances, and so acutely did he feel the death of Grotius that he at once fell ill, and was not enabled to resume his duties for several days.

But the most admirable trait in Guy Patin's character was his noble frankness and love of truth, and detestation of hypocrisy and meanness of every description. That several of his views and prejudices were unfounded and exaggerated, events have proved; but no doubt as to the purity of his motives, the uprightness of his conduct, will ever be entertained. It will be believed that qualities such as we have mentioned, procured for him an abundant supply of enemies. He was well aware of this, and, full of courage and confidence in his cause, was ever ready for the combat, and never contented with taking the mere defensive. But so likewise the goodness of his heart, his upright character, his active disposition, learned eloquence, and great practical knowledge ensured him numbers of attached friends and a vast reputation, which continued long after his decease. Unfortunately, beyond a few theses and ephemeral publications, he issued nothing from the press, so that the opinion posterity will form of him must rest upon his Letters, several collections of which, addressed to medical men and literati, have been published, but none having the least pretension to completeness or accuracy, until the present one brought out under the able superintendence of M. Reveillé-Parise. Guy Patin continued his active career until 1672, when he died, having undergone much vexation in his latter years from the ingratitude of his elder son, the exile for reasons he never could divine of his younger and favorite one, and from the rapid progress which the chemical practitioners made.

To a few of the multifarious subjects embraced in his correspondence we may now direct attention, and first to the writer's ideas upon the practice of physic. These were eminently scholastic. Galen is his deity, and Fernel, as the ablest expounder of Galen, his arch-priest. By this test must every doctrine be examined and every practice measured. Although,

certainly, the Galenical views and his own sound sense sometimes conducted our author to modes of treatment which would be approved of even in our own day, yet the manifest advance we have made will be at once seen by those who consult his book. He made little or no use of drugs, save purgatives, and sternly prohibited the use of opium, cinchona, or antimony, then beginning to be introduced, under any circumstances whatever. Although confiding much in Nature's powers, he by no means stood by as an idle spectator, for, if he declined interfering with her operations by means of the materia medica, he was by no means chary in the employment of the lancet. Perhaps he is the most daring phlebotomist on record, glorying in the victories he achieved, and regarding those who objected to his practice as rash with the greatest contempt. Here are a few of the innumerable passages in his letters illustrating this point.

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"He died in the 48th year of his age of a continuous fever of twelve days duration, for which only two small bleedings were performed. So much for bleeding in Italy! About that time my son was also very ill; but I rescued him from a bad condition of continued fever into which he had unfortunately fallen, quia adolescentuli semper stulté agunt, by means of twenty free bleedings from the arms and feet, with at least a dozen good purgations with cassia, senna, and syrup of pale roses, without ever using your bezoards, juleps, cordials, or confections of hyacinth or alkermes; and yet God has preserved him to me, in such a manner that he has not lost even a single lecture. Our Paris people usually take but little exercise, drink and eat a great deal, and become very plethoric; and in this condition they are never relieved of any disease that may attack them, if bleeding is not powerfully and copiously first resorted to; and yet, if it is not an acute disease, the effects are not so soon visible as from purgation. About the year 1633, M. Cousinot, now first physician of the King, was attacked by a severe and violent rheumatism, for which he was bled sixtyfour times in eight months, by order of his father and M. Bouvard. After being so often bled, they began to purge him, by which he was much relieved, and at last cured. The idiots who know nothing of our art, imagine that to purge is sufficient but they are much mistaken; for if bleeding has not preceded, to repress the impetuosity of the wandering humour, to empty the large vessels, and correct the intemperature of the liver, which produces this serosity, purging could not prove useful. I have heard him say himself that the bleeding would have alone cured him, and that without it the purging would have been of no avail. Formerly, I was called to a young gentleman of this place seven years of age, who fell ill of an acute pleurisy. His guardian disliked bleeding very much, and I could only oppose his hatred of it by a piece of good advice, that he should call in two of our seniors, MM. Seguin and Cousinot. The lad was bled thirteen times and cured as if by a charm, so that the guardian himself was converted.

*

Since I last wrote to you, I have been seized with so horrible a cold that I have been obliged to quit every thing and go to bed, where I have been bled seven times. God be praised I am now rid of it, and only want strength.

To prevent the marks of the small-pox, we employ here tepid almond oil. But I think the best remedy is bold venesection from the commencement of the disease ad contemporandum fervorem et extinguendam acrimoniam sanguinis exuberantis ex utráque basilica, and steeping, during the first twelve days, the eyes and the face ex aqua optima tepida; qualem hic habemus sequanicam, so as to procure the evaporation of his malignant humour imprisoned under the skin.

I have just been reading something in your Sennertus; I am quite in a rage: first, on account of the great number of faults there is, and secondly, because

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this good man was new at, and understood little of, practice. He knows nothing about bleeding old persons and children; for see what he says at p. 616 of his first volume. This miserable example excites my pity. I think the poor man has scarcely ever seen any patients, and that nullus fuit in praxi saltem admodum indiguit Delio Natatore. If we acted thus at Paris all our patients would quickly die. We cure patients more than eighty years old by bleeding, and bleed, just as successfully and without any ill effects, children two or three months old. I could point out at least two hundred persons living here who were bled in their infancy. I think the patients in Germany are much to be pitied with such physicians, who have indeed only the names of the qualities they bear, and who, understanding nothing of remedies or method, seek for the secrets of chemistry in Paracelsus and Crollius, who were never physicians at all. A day does not pass in Paris in which we do not bleed several infants at the breast and septuagenarians qui singuli feliciter inde convalescunt. There is not a woman in Paris who does not believe in its efficacy, and who would refuse to allow her infant to be bled for the fever of small-pox or measles, convulsions, or teething, so convinced have they become by experience."

Patin explains in many places that, it is not blood which is drawn from the veins on these numerous occasions, but mere "matter," "sanies," or "corrupted humours." Energetic, however, as he was in wielding the lancet and in the subsequent employment of purgatives, the various active remedies then becoming introduced into practice were met with his absolute prohibition and utter aversion-the very name of "specific" exciting his indignation and contempt. The Chemists, following in the footsteps of Basil Valentine and Paracelsus, employed the most energetic endeavours to procure the admission of some of the various mineral preparations, especially of mercury and antimony, into the materia medica; but to this the Galenical physicians opposed the stoutest resistance, and were long successful in their opposition, especially in France. In our own country, Sir Theodore Mayerne, alike skilled in Galenical lore and in chemical knowledge, contributed much to soften animosities and prepare the way for innovations; but, in Paris, the bitterest contentions prevailed, and no form of speech was deemed too harsh for employment, and no imputation too odious for assertion. Guy Patin repeatedly refers with pride to two solemn decrees made by the Faculty of Medecine in 1566 and 1615 against Antimony as a virulent poison, decrees which were afterwards sanctioned by the Parliament; and although, towards the latter part of his career, great numbers of the doctors of the Faculty had gone over to the chemists, he could never persuade himself that this was the case, until at last the opponents of the Galenists were strong enough to obtain, in 1666, a formal reversal of the obnoxious decrees. Nothing could convert Patin, his disbelief in the virtues of the medicine being as complete, and his diatribes against those who employed it as virulent from first to last. There can be no doubt that the use of antimony, at first administered by the hands of charlatans and in considerable doses, was frequently followed by the evil effects he represents as always attending its employment; and even in the hands of those of the regular physicians who employed it, it seems frequently to have induced death. Any one of the Faculty venturing to recommend, or even sanction, its administration was at once degraded in Patin's eyes to the level of the lowest charlatan, and stigmatized accordingly. Speaking of one of these named Guénaut, Patin says: