16 Biographical Memoir ofM. Corvisart. 



was not to him a motive of hesitation. Those whose memorj' 

 alone remained to be honoured, the Bichats and the Dessaults, 

 obtained, at his soUcitation, monuments, the only mark which 

 he wished to leave of the favour which he enjoyed. I forget 

 he has given another, — in founding, at his own expense, in the 

 Faculty, prizes for the young persons who distinguish them- 

 selves by good clinical observations. It has been remarked, 

 that many men, on attaining distinction, have remembered the 

 obstacles which poverty opposed to them in their early years, 

 and, by a very natural feeling, have sought to render less diffi- 

 cult the progress of some of their successors. M. Corvisart was 

 led to this the more willingly, that, to his enthusiasm for his 

 profession, he joined a true friendship for those who were pos- 

 sessed of the same feeling. He was jealous of none of his fel- 

 low practitioners, and always did them whatever services lay in 

 his power. His greatest pleasure was to see himself surrounded 

 by young physicians who exhibited talent, and it was not with 

 his advice, and with his lectures alone, that he encouraged 

 them ; he made them partake the enjoyments of his fortune, and 

 the diversions which a secret inclination to melancholy appear 

 to have rendered necessary to him. It is said, that, when he 

 had performed the duties of his profession, if he did not give 

 himself up to the amusements of gay and enlivening society, he 

 fell into depression of spirits, and painful melancholy ; that in 

 him the active and busy physician of the morning, became in 

 the evening a man of pleasure, who would not permit either his 

 art or his patients to be spoken of, — a disposition unfortunately 

 too common among men of ardent genius, and which greatly 

 diminished the services which M. Corvisart might have rendered 

 to science. Without hurting his zeal for teaching, which iden- 

 tified itself with his passion for his art, it made him a rather ne- 

 gligent academician, and an unproductive author. After ha- 

 ving keenly desired to be admitted among us, he scarcely ever 

 assisted at our meetings. His treatise on the diseases of the 

 heart, although his own in the ideas and in all that forms the 

 essence of a work, did not come from his pen, but was drawn 

 up by one of his pupils, M. Horeau ; and if it may be regret- 

 ted that any one should require such diversions, he was a fortu- 



