Biographical Memoir of M. Corvisart. 9 



devised for the treatment of this cruel disease had been but a 

 little sooner known, he would probably still have been full of 

 activity and life. In the Academy his place was filled by M. 

 Chaussier, and in the College of France by M. Laennec, who 

 has himself been in his youth removed from an art which he 

 had already benefited, and to which he gave promise of still 

 more important discoveries. 



2. Biographical Memoir ofM. Coevisaet. 



Jean Nicolas Corvisart, the associate in office, and constant 

 friend of M. Halle, was only one year younger. He was 

 born on the 15th February 1745, at Dricourt, a village in the 

 department of the Ardennes, whither his father, an attorney at 

 Paris, had retired, during one of those banishments of the par- 

 liament, which the quarrels of that body with the clergy so fre- 

 quently occasioned during the reign of Louis XV. The duties 

 of an attorney, exercised with talent and probity, yielded sure 

 profits, and would have enriched M. Corvisart, the father; 

 but he is said to have had a passion for painting, without 

 knowing much about it, and, what he gained by defending his 

 clients, he laid out in purchasing bad pictures. Being not more 

 skilled in human nature, he, for a long time, persisted in wish- 

 ing his son to follow his own profession, and kept him for whole 

 days copying law papers. The young man, who was of a lively 

 and ardent disposition, felt that he had been born for less mo- 

 notonous occupations. A vague uneasiness disquieted him, his 

 law studies became every day more insupportable, and, per- 

 haps, he would have fallen into great irregularities, had he not 

 on one of those festive rambles in which he indulged himself 

 whenever he could escape the eye of his father, entered by 

 chance the lecture-room of Anthony Petit, one of the most elo- 

 quent men who have been professors of anatomy and medicine 

 during the eighteenth century. On hearing the impressive dis- 

 course of that master, and attending to the majestic develop- 

 ment of ideas, whose novelty equalled their extent, the young 

 Corvisart recognised the profession for which he was designed. 

 He longed to study the animal economy, and for this purpose 

 he determined to be a physician. From this moment, dispatch- 



