12 Biographical Memoir of' M. Corvisart. 



band was the cause, at least the incidental cause, of the greatest 

 innovations that have taken place in France since the establish- 

 ment of the monarchy, had just founded an hospital, and M. 

 Corvisart ardently wished to obtain the charge of it ; but he 

 presented himself in his natural hair, and this innovation she 

 dared not take upon herself to countenance. At the first word 

 she declared to him that her hospital should never have a phy- 

 sician without a wig, and that it was for him to choose between 

 that head-dress and his exclusion. He preferred keeping his 

 hair. 



Bv a happy contrast, and when probably he had not greater 

 expectations, it was a monk who, on another occasion, did him 

 more justice. On the death of Desbois de Rochefort, which 

 happened in 1788, the superior of the ecclesiastics attached to 

 the Hopital de la Charite, a man held in great estimation for 

 his wisdom and his zeal in favour of the sick, and who had 

 been daily witness of M. Corvisart's assiduous cares, employed 

 his credit in getting him attached to that house, and succeeded 

 in the endeavour. From this time, M. Corvisart, continuing 

 the clinical instructions of his predecessor, saw all the young 

 physicians attend his lectures. He excited admiration by pos- 

 sessing in an eminent degree the talent of discovering from the 

 first moment the nature of diseases, and of foreseeing their pro- 

 gress and event. His fellow-practitioners were not slow in do- 

 ing him full justice, and he was already considered as one of the 

 first masters in the capital, when, in 1795, Fourcroy procured 

 a chair to be founded for him in the New School of Medicine. 

 Two years after, in 1797, he was appointed to the professorship 

 of medicine in the College of France, and there found himself 

 in the capacity of teaching the art in a theoretical point of view, 

 •as he had hitherto shewn it practically. The same pupils who 

 heard him in the one school explain the general principles, went 

 to see in the other their happy application, and in all things 

 found him correct, ardent, and obliging in the highest degree. 

 In every thing, 'lis pleasing eloquence, his lively temper, his sure 

 and quick tact, excited the highest admiration. If any one had 

 a feeling of repugnance to an art condemned to witness such 

 melancholy scenes, he had only to hear M. Corvisart for some 

 time to become an enthusiast in it. 



