¹ Some might say especially medicine. Thus David M Vess speaks of a “revolution” in French medicine: Medical revolution in France, 1789–96, Gainesville, University Presses of Florida, 1975. However, for the argument in favour of considerable continuity, see L W B Brockliss, ‘Before the clinic: French medical teaching in the eighteenth century’, in Caroline Hannaway and Ann La Berge (eds), Constructing Paris medicine, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1998, pp. 71–115; see also Ann La Berge and Caroline Hannaway, ‘Paris medicine: perspectives past and present’, in ibid., pp. 1–69, p. 51.

² Several authors have shown a special interest in political discourse, e.g. Keith Baker, The political culture of the old regime, Oxford, Pergamon, 1987. There is a valuable perspective in Lynn Hunt, Politics, culture and class in the French Revolution, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984, ch. 1, ‘The rhetoric of revolution’. I am particularly indebted to François Furet (Interpreting the French Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1981) for his argument for the importance of language in the revolutionary period. Both he and Mona Ozouf have shown an interest in language, yet in their massive and wide-ranging Critical dictionary of the French Revolution (transl. Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1989), one looks in vain for some article on discourse, language or vocabulary. It may be too early to expect a satisfactory comprehensive treatment of French revolutionary language. See also John Renwick (ed.), Language and rhetoric of the Revolution, Edinburgh University Press, 1990, especially ch. 2: Philippe Roger, ‘The French Revolution as logomachy’. There is more recent relevant material in Sophia Rosenfeld, A revolution in language: the problem of signs in late eighteenth-century France, Stanford University Press, 2001, pp. 138–9, 150, 164–72, 181–3, 307–8. Some references that appear to be relevant to the new revolutionary vocabulary in fact reflect the concern in this period to replace various regional languages within France by French.

³ “La locution ‘officier de santé’ mérite … une attention particulière”, J-C Sournia, La médecine révolutionnaire (1789–1799), Paris, Payot, 1989, p. 131.

⁴ J F La Harpe, Du fanatisme dans la langue révolutionnaire, 2nd edn, Paris, Migneret, 1797, p. 9.

⁵ François Lathenas, ‘De l'influence de la liberté sur la santé’, Journal de Médecine, Chirurgie et Pharmacie, vendémiaire year II [1793], p. 8. It is interesting that P J G Cabanis spoke of the medical profession as a kind of priesthood: “Sous certains rapports, la profession de médecine est une espèce de sacerdoce”. Du degré de certitude de la médecine, [Paris, Firmin Didot] nivôse year VI, 1798, 2nd ed., 1803, reprinted Geneva, 1989, p. 151n.

⁶Le malade imaginaire (1673), e.g. Troisième intermède. See also Le médecin malgré lui (1666), e.g. Act 2, Scene 2. For a full analysis of Molière's criticisms, see Laurence Brockliss and Colin Jones, The medical world of early modern France, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 336–44.

⁷ Brockliss and Jones, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 549. See also Toby Gelfand, Professionalizing modern medicine: Paris surgeons and medical science and institutions in the eighteenth century, Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1980.

⁸ G Bigourdan, Le système métrique des poids et mesures, Paris, n.p., 1901, ch. 2.

⁹ ‘Rapport sur l'ère de la République, par G. Romme’, Convention, Séance du 20 septembre 1793, reprinted in J Guillaume (ed.), Procès-verbaux du Comité d'Instruction publique de la Convention nationale, 6 vols, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1891–1957, vol. 2, pp. 440–51. The revolutionary calendar, like most of the revolutionary medical terms, enjoyed only temporary favour.

¹⁰ Furet, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 49.

¹¹ Brockliss and Jones, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 807.

¹² Ferdinand Brunot, Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900, Paris, Colin, 1967, vol. 9, part 2. Jean-Pierre Seguin, La langue française au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Bordas, 1972.

¹³ Roger Hahn, The anatomy of a scientific institution: the Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1971, pp. 266–8.

¹⁴ Article 300, Constitution of 5 fructidor year III [1795], Charles Desbach and J M Pontier (eds), Les Constitutions de la France, 2nd edn, Paris, Dalloz, 1989, p. 89.

¹⁵ F Dreyfus, L'Assistance publique sous le Législative et la Convention (1792–95), Paris, 1904, p. 73, quoted by George Rosen, From medical police to social medicine, New York, Science History Publications, 1974, p. 243.

¹⁶ Furet, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 49. See also p. 178, where Furet argues that “the Revolution was not so much an action as a language”.

¹⁷ A word may need to be said about the successions of legislatures in the revolutionary period. After a financial crisis had led to the calling of the Estates General in May 1789, the clergy and nobility were supplanted by the Third Estate, led by the bourgeoisie. They declared themselves to be the true representatives of the nation and called themselves the National (Constituent) Assembly, which sat until the end of September 1791. This was succeeded by the Legislative Assembly, which lasted for a year, being replaced by the Convention (September 1792–October 1795). The most extreme measures that took place in this period, including mass executions, may in a small part have been excused by the war emergency. A more equable period, the Directory, followed from 1795 to 1799, during which the five Directors were guided by the Council of Elders and the Council of 500. The coup d'état of Bonaparte in November 1799 brought the Directory to an end and inaugurated the Consulate until 1804. The medical world was in a state of flux under these successive regimes. Although medical problems were raised occasionally in these assemblies, detailed proposals were usually handed down to committees, of which the one most relevant to this paper was the Health Committee (Comité de Salubrité). For a general source of information on many aspects of the revolution, see Colin Jones, The Longman companion to the French Revolution, London, Longman, 1988.

¹⁸ Cf. Lawyers (avocats or procureurs) became “hommes de loi”.

¹⁹ Thus, for example, in Matthew Ramsey, Professional and popular medicine in France, 1770–1830 (Cambridge University Press, 1988) many of the references to officiers de santé are to the nineteenth-century inferior practitioners. For a full discussion of these practitioners, see Robert Heller, ‘Officiers de santé: the second-class doctors of nineteenth-century France’, Med. Hist., 1978, 22: 25–43.

²⁰ “… une subordination fondée sur la nature des choses, et sur l'objet même de leur étude”. Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond D'Alembert (eds), Encyclopédie, 39 vols, Lausanne, 1778–1782, vol. 5, ‘Docteur en médecine’, pp. 8–9. The author of the article was a certain Lavirotte, Doctor of the Paris Faculty of Medicine.

²¹ Sournia, op. cit., note 3 above, p. 102.

²² E H Ackerknecht, Medicine at the Paris hospital, 1794–1848, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1967, p. 32. This idea was opposed by both the Paris Faculty of Medicine and the College of Surgery, Gelfand, op. cit., note 7 above, p. 156.

²³ Gelfand, op. cit., note 7 above, p. 153.

²⁴Réponse du collège de chirurgie de Nantes, à l'invitation du Comité de Salubrité touchant les moyens de perfectionner l'art de guérir, Paris, 1791.

²⁵ Vess, op. cit., note 1 above.

²⁶ Jean-Gabriel Gallot, Vues générales sur la restauration de l'art de guérir, lues à la séance publique de la Société de Médecine le 31 Août 1790 et présenté au Comité de Salubrité de l'Assemblée nationale le 6 octobre, Paris, 1790.

²⁷ Guillaume Daignan, Réflexions d'un citoyen sur ce qui intéresse le plus essentiellement le bonheur de tous les ordres de la société, adressées à l'Assemblée nationale, spécialement sur l'éducation, les subsistances, la santé, les moeurs et l'ordre public, n.p. [1789?], p. 71.

²⁸ Félix Vicq-d'Azyr, Nouveau plan de constitution pour la médecine en France. Présenté à l'Assemblée nationale par la Société Royale de Médecine, Paris, 1790, p. 104.

²⁹ Matthew Ramsey, ‘The politics of professional monopoly in nineteenth-century medicine: the French model and its rivals’, in Gerald L Geison, Professions and the French State, 1700–1900, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984, pp. 225–305, on p. 225.

³⁰ Diderot and D'Alembert, op. cit., note 20 above, vol. 14, pp. 628–30. See also William Coleman, ‘Health and hygiene in the Encyclopédie: a medical doctrine for the bourgeoisie’, J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1974, 29: 399–421.

³¹ Dora B Weiner, ‘Le droit de l'homme à la santé: une belle idée devant l'Assemblée Constituante, 1790–1791’, Clio Medica, 1970, 5: 209–23. Despite its promising title, a large part of the article is devoted to the rivalry between J I Guillotin and J G Thouret, who represented the interests of the rival Comité de Mendicité.

³² Caroline Hannaway has pointed out that Vicq-d'Azyr's reform plan of 1790 was partly concerned with guiding the future practice of medicine towards the needs of public health: ‘Medicine, public welfare and the state in eighteenth-century France: the Société Royale de Médecine of Paris (1776–93)’, PhD thesis, Johns Hopkins University, 1974, p. 535.

³³ Dora B Weiner, The citizen–patient in revolutionary and imperial Paris, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, p. 90.

³⁴ Both terms are to be found in official documents. Sournia, op. cit., note 3 above, p. 96.

³⁵ Vess discusses the numerous changes of title over the revolutionary period, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 154–5. See also Ramsey, op. cit., note 19 above, pp. 73–4.

³⁶ De Lavaud, La Revolution médicale, un perspective de l'état futur de l'art de guérir en France, Paris. The tract is undated but the context makes clear that it was published between October 1790 and September 1792.

³⁷ On 27 germinal year II (16 April 1794) a law was passed permitting foreign medical practitioners to stay in France as ouvriers de santé. This class was obviously intended to be subservient to the officiers de santé.

³⁸ For example, Règlement fait par ordre du roi pour établir dans les hôpitaux militaires de Strasbourg, Metz et Lille des amphithéatres destinés à former en médecine, chirurgie et pharmacie des officiers de santé pour le service des hôpitaux militaires du royaume et des armées, Paris, 1775, cited by Vess, op. cit., note 1 above, p. 198. The standard French army medical history (Jean Guillermaud, Histoire de la médecine aux armées, Paris, C Lavouzelle, 1982, vol. 1, De l'Antiquité à la révolution) is less than helpful on the question.

³⁹ Also the term officier de santé, apart from its military use, described below, had been applied to the medical attendants of the royal household.

⁴⁰ Ramsey speaks of a “populace, dazzled by the health officer's title”, op. cit., note 19 above, p. 81; see also p. 184, where the title is described as an “official sounding credential”.

⁴¹ See ‘Lieutaud’ [Joseph, first president of the Société de Médecine] in Félix Vicq-d'Azyr, Oeuvres, 6 vols, Paris, Baudouin, year XIII, 1805, vol. 3, p. 26. Vicq-d'Azyr actually introduced the term officier de santé quite casually after speaking of Lieutaud's concern for public health. He used the term to describe medical practitioners in the provinces, who would need some support (appui), and he said that they should have the protection of the government.

⁴² Hannaway, op. cit., note 32 above.

⁴³ Decree of the Convention, 1 August 1793, Ancien Moniteur, vol. 17, p. 300. The inclusion of pharmacists in the military context under the label of officiers de santé should be noted.

⁴⁴Convention nationale (February–May 1794), 23, p. 101. Physicians and Apothecaries of the first class were to receive 400 livres a month, second class 300 livres, and third class 200 livres.

⁴⁵Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860, reprint, Lichtenstein, 1969, Series 1, vol. 81 (18 frimaire year II [1793]), p. 128.

⁴⁶ Vess, op. cit., note 1 above, p. 117.

⁴⁷Recueil Périodique de la Société de Santé, 2e édition, year V, 1 [1796–97]: Avant-propos.

⁴⁸Société de Médecine de Paris, 1796–1896. Livre du centenaire, Paris, 1896, pp. 8, 12.

⁴⁹ Terence D Murphy, ‘The French medical profession's perception of its social function between 1776 and 1830’, Med. Hist., 1979, 23: 259–78, p. 265.

⁵⁰ From 27 pluviose year V (15 February 1797). See Recueil de la Société de Santé, year V, 2: 237ff. for a discussion of the changes of name.

⁵¹ F Vicq-d'Azyr, ‘Nouveau plan de constitution pour la médecine en France’, reprinted in A de Beauchamp (ed.), Enquêtes et documents relatifs à l'enseignement supérieur, Paris, 1888, vol. 28. A full analysis is given by Hannaway, op. cit., note 32 above, ch. 8.

⁵² Quoted by Gelfand, op. cit., note 7 above, p. 157.

⁵³ Medical services were provided by barber surgeons.

⁵⁴ Gallot, op. cit., note 16 above, p. 9.

⁵⁵ Ramsey, op. cit., note 19 above, p. 72. Michel Foucault, The birth of the clinic, transl. A M Sheridan, London, Routledge, 1989, pp. 33–5.

⁵⁶Réimpression de l'ancien Moniteur, 16 frimaire year III [1794], pp. 663–6.

⁵⁷ Ackerknecht, op. cit., note 22 above, p. 33.

⁵⁸ Heller, op. cit., note 19 above. The rural officiers de santé were in some ways a reincarnation of the barber surgeons of the old regime.

⁵⁹ The choice of the term officier de santé for second-class doctors was perhaps implicitly an admission of its association with practitioners of doubtful credentials.

⁶⁰ Standards were raised over the course of the century.

⁶¹ Legally they were second-class physicians, the term doctor being reserved for doctors of medicine and surgery.

⁶²Archives Parlementaires, op. cit., note 45 above, vol. 23, pp. 625–30.

⁶³ Jan Goldstein, Console and classify: the French psychiatric profession in the nineteenth century, University of Chicago Press, 2001, p. 31.

⁶⁴ For French empirics, see Ramsey, op. cit., note 19 above, Part 2 ‘Popular medicine’, pp. 129–228.

⁶⁵ Foucault, op. cit., note 55 above, p. 72.

⁶⁶ Jean-Pierre Goubert, ‘L'art de guérir. Médecine savante et médecine populaire dans la France de 1790’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 1977, 2: 908–926, p. 911.

⁶⁷ Jacquinot, Observations sur le projet de resolution présenté au Conseil de 500, Séance 16 thermidor year V (3 August 1797), p. 3.

⁶⁸ Brockliss and Jones, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 820.

⁶⁹ Conseil de 500, Rapport par Cabanis sur l'organisation des écoles de médecine, 1798, p. 10. See also, however, Martin S Staum, Cabanis: Enlightenment and medical philosophy in the French Revolution, Princeton University Press, 1980, pp. 269–70.

⁷⁰ For example, in 1797 (17 prairial year V) Baraillon brought to the Council of 500 a project which would have made it compulsory for all medical practitioners to possess a diploma from one of the écoles de santé. J F Baraillon, Défense d'exercer l'art de guérir … sans titre authentique, 1797, p. 2.

⁷¹ Ramsey, op. cit., note 19 above, p. 236.

⁷² André Dumont, Rapport et projet de décret et de règlement relatif à l'organisation des hôpitaux militaires, Paris, floréal year III [1795], pp. 67–73; see, for example, Titre III.

⁷³ See, for example, Sur l'origine de l'inégalité, Part 1, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, ed. B Gagnebin and M Raymond, Paris, Gallimard, 1964, vol. 3, p. 139. I owe this reference to Philip Robinson.

⁷⁴ ‘… ramener la médecine à cet état de simplicité ou l'officier de santé doit être celui de nature’. F P M D Guillemardet, Rapport fait au nom du Comité de la Guerre, sur l'organisation du service de la santé des armées et des hôpitaux militaires, [Paris, 1794?] p. 3.

⁷⁵ A F Fourcroy, Rapport et projet du décret sur l'établissement d'une école centrale de santé à Paris, Paris, year III, 1795, p. 3.

⁷⁶ Archives Nationales F15. 1917, quoted by P Ganière, Corvisart, médecin de Napoléon, Paris, Flammarion, 1951, p. 49.

⁷⁷ Sournia, op. cit., note 3 above, p. 126.

⁷⁸ Conseil de 500, Rapport fait par L. Vitet, deputé du département du Rhône, Séance 17, ventôse year VI (7 March 1798).

⁷⁹ See, for example, the discussion on compulsory examinations, Procès-verbaux du Conseil de 500, vendémiaire year VI (September 1797), pp. 128–31, 217–18, 220–4.

⁸⁰ A report of 1798 gives an estimate of the number of officiers de santé in France as greater than 12,000. De l'état actuel de l'école de santé de Paris, 1798, p. 22n. This compares with not many more than a hundred graduating in the early years from the Paris school, the largest of the three. However, the school grew rapidly and by the year X (1801–2), there were 1,390 students. Ackerknecht, op. cit., note 22 above, p. 36.

⁸¹ It was not until 1798 that the medical schools began to issue certificates to graduates. Brockliss and Jones, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 820. According to Weiner “some medical students asked for and received ‘certificates of capacity’ from the Paris Health School during the ten years when medical diplomas did not exist officially”, op. cit., note 33 above, p. 391.

⁸² Quoted in R Roland, Les médecins et la loi du 19 Ventôse an XI, Paris, 1883, p. 11, English translation from Ackerknecht, op. cit., note 22 above, p. 38.

⁸³ Fourcroy, however, had been hostile to the extreme conservatism of the Faculty.

⁸⁴Procès-verbaux du Conseil de 500, germinal year VII, pp. 614–16.

⁸⁵ Vitet, op. cit., note 78 above, p. 12.

⁸⁶ Although still described as officiers de santé, graduates of the new medical schools from 1798 were at least issued with a certificate of competence.

⁸⁷ See, for example, Moniteur, 18 May 1803, p. 1003.

⁸⁸ Quoted by Rosenfeld, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 168.

⁸⁹ John Cross, Sketches of the medical schools of Paris, London, printed for J Callow by Smith and Davy, 1815. See also Ackerknecht, op. cit., note 22 above, ch. 16, and John Harley Warner, ‘Remembering Paris: memory and the American disciples of French medicine in the nineteenth century’, Bull. Hist. Med., 1991, 65: 301–25.