DUCTLESS GLANDS 53 1 



DUCTLESS GLANDS, INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND HOR- 



MONIC EQUILIBRIUM 



By FIELDING H. GARRISON, M.D. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 



IN the year 1749 there eame up to Paris from the Pyrenees a young 

 medical graduate of Montpellier who was destined to become, by 

 reputation, at least, the most distinguished French practitioner of his 

 time. At the age of twenty-three Theophile de Bordeu (1722-76) 

 was already professor of anatomy at Montpellier and inspector of min- 

 eral waters at Auch and Pau ; at twenty-five he had been elected a cor- 

 responding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, and, except for 

 an empty purse, his Parisian success was assured, not only through his 

 handsome presence, his attractive meridional disposition and his newly 

 acquired fashionable connections, but in part through the influence 

 and reputation of his father, who was one of the best known Montpellier 

 physicians of his time. In order to launch himself it was necessary 

 for young Bordeu to pass the examinations of the Paris Eaculty (his 

 Montpellier degree counting for nothing here) and to gain the good will 

 of its members ; yet, in spite of these handicaps, he began to loom large 

 in public consideration, when his fortunes took an unexpected turn. 

 Bouvart, a rich and powerful practitioner of the day, became so envious 

 that he pursued Bordeu with venomous hatred, and accused him of 

 stealing jewels from the body of a dead patient. 1 On this charge he 

 actually succeeded in having his name stricken from the list of Parisian 

 physicians, and it was reinstated, after long dispute, and only through 

 powerful influence and by two acts of Parliament. The reason for this 

 savage manifestation of professional jealousy (the charge of theft is 

 said to have been false) was not because the young Bearnais physician 

 possessed any very formidable, overtopping ability, but on account of 

 the ease with which he glided into a fashionable practice and aristo- 

 cratic consideration. In an age in which the byword was " Le ridicule 

 iue," his morals and his moral life were those of the courtiers of the 

 period, and he seems to have succeeded largely through the good graces 

 of women, one of whom, in fact, raised the money start him in prac- 

 tice. In his early days he had not found the rustic patients of the 

 provinces to his liking and he aimed at a court clientele with such suc- 

 cess that shortly before his death he was called to the bedside of the 

 moribund Louis XV. He himself was found dead in bed on the morn- 



1 Stealing from dead bodies was a favorite imputation against the eighteenth 

 century doctor and is represented in an old water-color sketch of Eowlandson 's. 



