THE STORY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCIENCE 



gendie in France ; and the joint efforts of these various 

 workers led presently to the abandonment of those se- 

 vere and often irrational depletive methods blood-let- 

 ting and the like that had previously dominated med- 

 ical practice. To this end also the " statistical method," 

 introduced by Louis and his followers, largely contrib- 

 uted ; and by the close of the first third of our century 

 the idea was gaining ground that the province of thera- 

 peutics is to aid nature in combating disease, and that 

 this may often be better accomplished by simple means 

 than by the heroic measures hitherto thought necessary. 

 In a word, scientific empiricism was beginning to gain a 

 hearing in medicine, as against the metaphysical precon- 

 ceptions of the earlier generations. 



ii 



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 distinguished 

 patient's malady as " gale repercutee " 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 distinguished patient were 

 afflicted with the itch, the sagacious physician would 

 carefully hide the fact behind circumlocutions, and pro- 

 ceed 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 ques- 



360 



