The care a nation takes of its health always reveals a lot about its attitudes to life. In France,
the medical profession is particularly interesting, for there is a political dimension to its influence. Its rise to
power in the state is one of the striking features of this century. There were 15 doctors in the Assembly
of 1789, 26 in that of 1791, 40 in the Convention. About a dozen served in the
smaller Restoration Chamber of Deputies
and 28 in that of July.
In 1848, 49 of the constituents were doctors, and in 1849, 34 of the legislators. There were 11 in Napoleon III's
Corps Legislatif of 251 members, 33 in the National Assembly of 1871, but by 1898 their number had
risen to 72. It may be argued from these figures that doctors gradually replaced the old
landowning class and in some cases the clergy as leaders of public opinion
and that in the Third Republic they reached the zenith of their prestige and
influence. But to say this is to beg many questions: it is to assume that doctors were not also landowners, that their influence
was an alternative and opposed to the old notable class, that the
profession meant the same thing over 150 years, that the opportunities open to doctors were unchanging, and that
their appearance in parliament always represented an acknowledgement of their influence, rather
than that the doctors were seeking new fields in which to act, to compensate for difficulties
they were experiencing in the exercise of their profession.
Medicine in France in this period was in fact in a state of confusion and division as total as that which afflicted politics.
It is impossible to paint a picture of doctors as the products of a new science whose capacity and skill were gradually
established, recognised and accepted. There was no one medical science, and the rivalry between the different theories
was as merciless and disruptive as the cut-throat competition of commerce. In 1850 the medicine of cure by bleeding,
purging and the administration of enemas was still in existence, for all the discoveries of the capital cities, whose
doctrines were slow to penetrate the countryside. The efforts of Voltaire's doctor Tronchin (1709-81) and his school to
replace this by the use of fresh air, exercise, vegetarianism, water-drinking, breast-feeding and vaccination were slow
to win acceptance.
The enlightenment even saw a regression to the doctrine of vitalism- the belief that a mysterious vital
element regulates the organs and fights death. This doctrine was taken up by the faculty of medicine of Montpellier and
taught by it till the twentieth century so that Paris and Montpellier taught medicine in radically different ways., The
training which the doctors practising between 1850 and 1900 received preserved the strangest errors taught by men
highly esteemed in the first half of the century. One of these, to take an example, was Broussais (1772-1838), a man of
great eloquence, imposing presence, and unrelenting combativeness, who wielded great power in the medical world.
He imagined that the cause of all diseases was inflammation, particularly in the intestines. He prescribed
abundant blood-letting, leeches and severe diets. His starving patients, bled white, died like flies, but he was
nevertheless made a professor at the faculty of Paris ( 1831) . When towards the end of his career his star waned
and his students turned elsewhere, he took up phrenology and his very popular lectures on this gave him a second lease
of life. Equally influential but at a more popular level was F. V. Raspail (1794-1878), whose Natural History of Health
and Illress (1843) and annual en-cyclopedias (1846-64) became best sellers as manuals of self medication: he advocated
camphor as the cure for all diseases.
Possibly the single most successful doctor of the nineteenth century was Philippe Ricord ( 1800-89), personal
physician to Napoleon III and the national expert on syphilis. Born in Baltimore, the son of a bankrupt French shipowner,
he rose to become Paris's busiest and possibly richest doctor . His house in the rue de Tournon contained five large
salons for his patients to wait in: one for ordinary people, always crammed full and each given a number, one for women,
who entered by a separate staircase, one for people with letters of recommendation, and a fourth for friends and doctors.
All were decorated magnificently with paintings and sculptures, for he was a great collector. An enormous fifth
reception salon had two Rubens, a Van Dyke, Gericaults, etc. His office contained on three walls a large library
surmounted by a gallery of busts of the great physicians of all time, underneath it glass cases with Paris's best
collection of surgical instruments and on the fourth wall portraits of his masters Dupuytren and Orfila, and one of
himself by Couture. He was France's most decorated celebrity after Alexandre Dumas, with seventeen medals: he was
popular not leat for being a man of the world, indulgent to his patients and famous for his witticisms.' His Treatise
on Venereal Diseases (1838) did rightly distinguish between gonorrhoea and syphilis, but he insisted that the latter
was not contagious through secondary lesions : he continued to administer his incorrect doctrine to all the rich of
Europe, despite the discoveries of the more obscure Joseph Rollet of Lyon (1856).
Extract from “France 1848 – 1945 Ambition & Love”, by Theodore Zeldin. Oxford University Press,
Britain:1979.
Amazon eBay: in madagascar, for example, the “zébu de
mitrailleuse,” the machine gun zébu, as shown
figure 1. veterinary surgery in the countryside,
morocco.
source: l’inspection du service vétérinaire de l’armée.
le service vétérinaire et le service de la remonte
aux colonies, les armées françaises d’outre-mer:
collection éditée à l’occasion de l’exposition coloniale
internationale de paris (paris: imprimerie nationale,
1931).
volume 29 ¦ no. 1 ¦ may 2006 veterinary heritage ¦ 3
in figure 2, was useful to the french. military
veterinarians were of paramount importance in
keeping these animals fit and able to work. if
the horses and other beasts of burden couldn’t
advance, neither could the french army. humans
were more expendable,
in many ways, than the
animals because the
french were drawing on
local algerian conscripts
as well as on their own
prisons to man the french
african army, l’armée
d’afrique.16 these french
prisoners were hardened
criminals who were
difficult to control. they
were sardonically called
les joyeaux, the cheerful
or merry ones.
in north africa, in
particular, camels became
an important force in the
french war apparatus
since much of the terrain
they set out to conquer was
difficult if not impossible
to cover without them. in
fact, the french developed
an entirely new form of
military unit, the mehari
company, le compagnie
méhariste, based almost
entirely on camels and
they utilized substantial
local algerian labor to
man these units.17 the
name is derived from the
type of camel preferred for
these units, the méhari, a
very light colored camel.
as a result of dealing with
this new beast of burden,
the french were forced to
learn a great deal about
camel husbandry and
treating camel diseases. this research formed a
substantial part of their scientific contributions as
veterinarians in africa and culminated in major
works like that of the veterinarian curasson, the
camel and its diseases, still cited today.18
french veterinarians in africa made many
important scientific contributions to medical
knowledge in general, and veterinary knowledge
in particular. one example comes from the work of
veterinarian camille guérin and his colleague the
physician dr. calmette.
at the pasteur institute,
named “pastoria,” in
the guinean town of
kindia, the “first trials
of the vaccination against
tuberculosis with bcg
were made.”19 bcg stands
for bacille calmette-
guérin and this vaccine
developed by guérin and
calmette is still used in
many countries to protect
against tuberculosis.
pastoria was created and
directed by the military
veterinarian wilbert.
another veterinarian,
dr. nocard, supervised
some of the first trials
of the vaccine for
anthrax in algeria in
1898.20 prior to this, dr.
nocard had researched
cholera in egypt, and
was considered by dr.
louis pasteur to be very
talented. in 1911, the
veterinarians bouquet
and bridré discovered and
tested the first vaccine
against sheep pox in
algeria.21 other important
research by military
veterinarians included
work done in morocco
on trypanosomiasis,
a significant killer of
camels in north africa.
these are a few of
the many examples of
important veterinary
and medical research conducted by french
veterinarians in africa.
military veterinarians, though, did not limit their
activities to healing animals or the research of exotic
diseases. these men played an active role from
figure 2. machine gun zebu, madagascar.
