Guy Patin and the Medical Profession in Paris in the XVIIth Century

Abstract

THE present volume by Dr. Francis Packard, whose “Life and Times of Ambroise Pare (1510-1590)” was noticed in our columns on March 3, 1923, p. 281, has been reprinted with additions from the “Annals of Medical History,” of which he is the editor. The work is divided into nine chapters, commencing with a historical foreword which contains an account of contemporary politics, the later chapters dealing with Patin's education, his home life and literary interests, his opposition to cinchona and antimony, and his relations to the surgeons, barber surgeons and apothecaries. A special chapter is devoted to a description of the Paris medical faculty in which Patin's life interest was centred. “No praise,” says Dr. Packard, “was too fulsome for those who furthered its cause and no abuse too savage for those who dared to attack it.” Of particular interest are the pages concerned with Patin's relations to Moliere, his controversy with Theophile Renaudot, the gazetteer and quack, and his quarrel with the physicians of Montpellier.

Guy Patin and the Medical Profession in Paris in the XVIIth Century.

By Dr. Francis R. Packard. Pp. xxii + 334 + 10 plates. (London: Oxford University Press, 1925.) 18s. net.