Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/608

Baseilhac's settled purpose to fit himself for the practice of medicine, his father sent him to Lyons, where his uncle, who was himself a surgeon, would be able to superintend the boy's further training. Through the latter's influence, young Baseilhac was allowed to enter the Hôtel-Dieu of that city as one of its regular pupils. At the end of two years—i.e., in 1724—he left Lyons and went to Paris, where he hoped to add materially to his stock of professional knowledge. His first step, after reaching the metropolis, was to enter the service of a surgeon in active practice; and then, aided by the latter's influence, he succeeded (in 1726) in entering the Paris Hôtel-Dieu as one of the regular pupils. Soon after he had completed his term of service at the hospital, he was appointed Physician-in-Ordinary to the Prince-Bishop of Bayeux, in Normandy. The death of the latter in 1728, less than two years after Baseilhac had entered his service, came as a great blow to the young surgeon, for he had learned to esteem him very highly. In his will the Bishop left a small legacy to Baseilhac—that is, a sum of money sufficient to pay for the regular course of instruction at the Medical School of Saint Cosmas in Paris, and also to procure a complete outfit of surgical instruments. In 1740 he became a member of the Feuillants Branch of the Franciscan monks, it being understood, however, that he was to be allowed the special privilege of practicing surgery among the poorer classes. Through accidental circumstances he was led gradually to drop general surgery and to confine his work to operations for stone. His official name at this time was "Frère Jean de Saint-Côme," or simply "Frère Côme." (Fig. 27.) As he gained in experience as a lithotomist, he became convinced that the method which his predecessor, Frère Jacques, had practiced with such great success, was preferable to the more complicated and more dangerous plan commonly pursued by surgeons at that time, and thereafter he adopted it in all his cases. But he modified the procedure to a certain extent; that is, he invented an instrument by means of which the actual cutting of the perinaeum was accomplished with a concealed knife (see Fig. 28). The