206 Biogi-aphical Memoir of M. Philippe Pinel. 



and, till he had attained the age of seventeen, he could not be 

 sent to Toulouse to prosecute his studies. Even then, as his 

 parents were not rich, he found himself obliged to support him- 

 self by giving lessons in mathematics, and composing theses for 

 students in more easy circumstances, and less diligent than him- 

 self. In the thesis which he himself at that time defended in 

 philosophy, and which treats of the accuracy which the study of 

 the mathematics communicates to the judgment in its application 

 to the sciences, is seen the first germ of the ideas which directed 

 him in the rest of his labours. However, as the fees of gradua- 

 tion were pretty high, it was not until 1773, when he was nearly 

 twenty-nine years of age, that he was able to obtain the title of 

 Doctor. He then went to Montpellier, and settled there, hop- 

 ing that he might find some practice in a city whose medical 

 reputation drew so great a concourse of invalids from all parts 

 of Europe. But two causes opposed his success : his timidity 

 and want of assurance, on the one hand ; and, on the other, the 

 reputation which he had acquired as a geometrician. Being 

 without patients, he continued to teach pupils, and at the same 

 time made himself master of the higher parts of mathema- 

 tics, with the intention of applying them to physiology. The 

 celebrated work of Borelli, on animal mechanics, formed the 

 chief object of his meditations. He sought to throw on it the 

 light of modern analysis, of which he possessed all the resources. 

 This was publicly known ; and the public thought it impossible 

 that a man so entirely engaged with abstract sciences could ever 

 have skill in curing. 



M. Pinel imagined that, in Paris, where the sciences shine 

 with so much splendour, these prejudices would not be enter- 

 tained, and removed to that city in 1777. Cousin, an able 

 geometrician, and a member of the Academy, to whom he was 

 recommended, tried to induce him to confine himself to mathe- 

 matics, in which he thought he would be more fortunate ; but 

 M. Pinel persisted in his plan, though his first attempts in the 

 capital were not more encouraging. He had translated Cullen's 

 Practice of Medicine, and expected thus to form a beginning to 

 his reputation *. An established physician was, precisdy at 



» In 1785, 2 vols. 8vo. 



