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One year later, the size of the Gazette was increased by the addition of four separate pages which bore the title, “Nouvelles,” and simultaneously the price of the entire journal (8 pages) was increased to one sou. It is scarcely necessary to state that the Gazette was directly inspired by Richelieu, and that even the king occasionally took a hand in editing it. Gilles de la Tourette, the author of the memoir from which I have compiled the present brief sketch, says that he examined all the issues of the Gazette from 1631 to 1653 but failed to find in them a single réclame—advertisement or editorial puff.

From the very day on which it was first published, the Gazette proved a brilliant success. I should have mentioned, at the beginning of this sketch, the fact that for a certain length of time Renaudot contributed liberally from his own funds toward the support of his pet schemes of benevolence, but it does not appear, in the account given by de la Tourette, whether the Gazette enterprise should not be counted as one of these schemes. At the same time, the thought naturally suggests itself that this physician’s motive in advocating the publishing of an official newspaper like the Gazette was probably a strong desire to win for his humanitarian schemes the strong support which the Cardinal and the King would be able to grant. Whether this be true or not, the idea of creating an official newspaper under the protection of the highest authority in France certainly showed far-sighted wisdom on the part of Renaudot. In 1640,—i.e., nine years after the founding of the Gazette as an official dispenser of political and civic news,—Renaudot changed its scope by adding to it the character of a medical journal. After 1640, therefore, the Gazette may rightly be classed as representing the first attempt to publish a medical periodical in France.