CHARLATANISM IN FRANCE. 635 
statements or certificates concerning the appearances that 
present themselves on the examination of dead horses. 
Signed, Boudon & Crouzon. 
Legalized hy the Prefect, Marquis de Guirard. 
Thus, thanks to the intervention of our two brethren, and the 
certificate which they have given to him, he maintains his 
ground. The first thing he did, was to substitute, instead of the 
sign-board that was destroyed, ^‘Rivemale treats and operates 
upon horses like the artists.” And I ? Why, I was quite beaten, 
and I must be quiet. 
As to the certificate or diploma of our brother practitioners, 
I abandon it and them to your judgment. I abandon to them, 
and to those who may imitate them, the disgrace of rendering 
such service to science, to their brethren, and their country. 
Leon Bose comes next to Rivemale. He has not yet had 
recourse to the kind and enlightened examination of Boudon 
and Crouzon. He has neither title nor sign-board. He does not 
wait for his patients to come to him—he runs after them. He 
has a medicine for all domestic animals. Always on the road, 
he travels from hamlet to hamlet, and from one door to another, 
haranguing the villagers, and prophesying evil to their cattle 
if they have not recourse to his remedy or his invocations. 
Frightened or teazed, perhaps they yield, and God knows that 
it is often to their cost. Sang-dragon, and vipers’ powder, are 
the base of his famous medicine, whatever be the disease. 
Wounds—he treats them all with oil of vitriol, and powdered 
alum. As to ventral hernia, and they are very frequent in our 
country, he pretends to make them disappear (fondre) with a 
plaister of Burgundy pitch and corrosive sublimate. It appears 
that the last substance is in very considerable quantity, for I have 
seen the parietes of the belly slough away, and the intestines 
come out, and the horse die a miserable death. 
The third charlatan of Saint-Affrique is a farrier and iron¬ 
monger, called Pierre Grand ; they call him the ^'great artist.” 
His knowledge must, indeed, be great, for he is able to preserve 
the health of those that are well; and, as for the sick horses, he 
possesses a sovereign remedy for all their diseases. It is com¬ 
posed of muscadel wine and a little musk, but it must be made 
by himself alone—it will be efficacious in no hands but his. 
He communicates to it a magical power, by certain signs and 
gestures which he makes before and after the administration of 
it, lifting his hands towards the heavens, or bending himself 
towards the earth, as the case may require. All these solemn 
fooleries astound our simple merry countrymen, and they hesitate 
