wholly on the temperance of his diet for the re-establishment of bis health, "What use do you make of your physician?" said the king to him one day. "We chat together, sire," said the poet; "he gives me his prescriptions; I never follow them, and so I get well."
An ample apology for this infidelity nay be found in the state of the profession at that day, whose members affected to disguise a profound ignorance of the true principles of science under a pompous exterior, which, however it might impose upon the vulgar, could only bring them into deserved discredit with the better portion of the community. 'The physicians of that time are described as parading the streets of Paris on mules, dressed in a long robe and bands, holding their conversation in bad Latin, or, it they condescended to employ the vernacular, mixing it up with such a jargon of scholastic phrase and scientific technics as to render it perfectly unintelligible to vulgar ears, The following lines, cited by M. Taschereau, and written in good earnest at the time, seem to hit off most of these peculiarities.
"Affecter un air pedantesque,
Cracher du Gree et du Latin,
Longoe perruque, habit grotesque,
De la fourrure et du satin,
Tout cela réuni fait presque
Ce qu'on appelle en médecin,"*
- ↑ A gait and air somewhat pedantic,
And scarce to spit but Greek or Latin,
A long peruke and habit antic,
Sometimes of fur, sometimes of satin,
Form the receipt by which 'tis showed
How to make doctors à la mode.
