A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



in medicine as against the metaphysical preconcep- 

 tions of the earlier generations. 



PARASITIC DISEASES 



I have just adverted to the fact that Napoleon Bona- 

 parte, as First Consul and as Emperor, was the victim 

 of a malady which caused him to seek the advice of 

 the most distinguished physicians of Paris. It is a 

 little shocking to modern sensibilities to read that these 

 physicians, except Corvisart, diagnosed the distin- 

 guished patient's malady as u gale r6percutee" that 

 is to say, in idiomatic English, the itch "struck in." 

 It is hardly necessary to say that no physician of to- 

 day would make so inconsiderate a diagnosis in the 

 case of a royal patient. If by any chance a distin- 

 guished patient were afflicted with the itch, the saga- 

 cious physician would carefully hide the fact behind 

 circumlocutions and proceed to eradicate the disease 

 with all despatch. That the physicians of Napoleon 

 did otherwise is evidence that at the beginning of the 

 century the disease in question enjoyed a very different 

 status. At that time itch, instead of being a most 

 plebeian malady, was, so to say, a court disease. It 

 enjoyed a circulation, in high circles and in low, that 

 modern therapeutics has quite denied it; and the phy- 

 sicians of the time gave it a fictitious added importance 

 by ascribing to its influence the existence of almost 

 any obscure malady that came under their observa- 

 tion. Long after Napoleon's time gale continued to 

 hold this proud distinction. For example, the imagi- 

 native Dr. Hahnemann did not hesitate to affirm, as a 

 positive maxim, that three -fourths of all the ills that 



204 



