464 A French Medical Legacy 



mind would all the more readily take the imprint of directions for conduct 

 worthy of republican citizenship. 



It was the needs of the army which first brought home the necessity for sys- 

 tematic instruction beyond the primary-school age, and the first institutions 

 of higher learning to be thought of by the Revolutionaries were schools for 

 training engineers and officers. The Central School for Public Works was de- 

 creed March 11 and the School of Mars on June 6, 1794. Teachers were also 

 needed, and on October 30 came a decree establishing a Normal School, a 

 center for instruction "in the art of teaching morals and forming the minds 

 of young republicans in the practice of public and private virtues." Finally, on 

 December 4 (14 frimaire an 3, according to the Revolutionary calendar) the 

 Convention made provision for three Schools of Health, one in Paris, one in 

 Montpellier, and one in Strasbourg. The School of Mars and the Normal 

 School were very short-lived, their existence being only a matter of a few 

 months, but the School of Public Works became the well-known Paris Ecole 

 Polytechnique, and the three Schools of Health became the leading medical 

 schools in France, although one of them has been forced to change its nation- 

 ality three times. 



To Antoine Francois Fourcroy belongs the honor of setting in motion the 

 legislation which gave rise to present-day French medical education. He him- 

 self had obtained his medical degree in 1780 with great difficulty because of 

 poverty. The 6,000 livres necessary for the diploma had been contributed by 

 friends of the celebrated anatomist, Vicq d'Azyr, who boarded with young 

 Fourcroy's family. Fourcroy had welcomed the Revolutionary movement and 

 the reforms it promised, but he was averse to entering the wild arena of prac- 

 tical politics and at first refused to accept any office. In spite of his protests he 

 was elected a member of the Convention— one of the few physicians in this 

 body— and here he devoted himself almost entirely to questions concerning 

 education. Convinced of the necessity of a supply of physicians, chiefly for 

 the army, he consulted Prieur, the member of the Committee on Public Safety 

 in charge of the teaching of sciences and arts, asking him to recommend some- 

 one capable of collaborating in mapping out a scheme of organization for 

 medical education. The name of Francois Chaussier was suggested. 



Chaussier was not a Parisian, but had been prominent in medical circles 

 in the provincial city of Dijon, holding appointments there not only as Surgeon 

 of the Prisons and Physician of the Hospitals but also as Professor of Chem- 

 istry, and giving courses in anatomy and legal medicine. Because he sym- 

 pathized with the idea of the Jacobins regarding the centralization of all power 

 in Paris he proposed the establishment in that city of a single Central School 

 of Health. Jacobin principles, however, had just passed into disfavor, and 

 members of the Convention agreed that similar schools should be established 

 at Montpellier and Strasbourg. Fourcroy concurred and the decree was so 

 worded. It is curious to note that when the government came to publish the 

 text of the decree it prefaced it by a copy of Chaussier's report advocating a 



