Читать книгу The Dawn of Modern Medicine онлайн

8 страница из 66

CARDINAL DUC DE RICHELIEU

(From a portrait engraved on copper by Nanteuil in 1655.)

Another important feature was added by Renaudot to his philanthropic scheme in this same year 1640. He obtained from the King a decree authorizing him to establish a “Bureau de Consultations Charitables pour les Pauvres Malades.” The manner in which this Bureau was to be conducted may be briefly explained in the following words. At certain fixed hours fifteen physicians, all of them friends of the founder, and a smaller number of apothecaries presented themselves at the Bureau, where, seated at a few separate tables, the physicians listened to the statements made by the poor people who had come there in the hope of obtaining relief from their maladies. In the simpler cases, a single physician was fully equal to the task of prescribing whatever the patient’s condition called for, but in those of a more obscure nature, two or three of the physicians present joined in a consultation. After the question of a suitable treatment had been decided, one of the apothecaries in attendance prepared the remedy or remedies which had been prescribed, and at the same time a written statement of the diagnosis was handed to the patient. If the ailment happened to be of a surgical nature, the measures required for its treatment were carried out on the spot. Some of the patients who presented themselves at the Bureau were easily able to pay for professional advice; and, when such a person appeared, an opportunity was afforded for dropping into a suitable box the fee which he or she was disposed to give. This money was utilized in paying for the remedies furnished the poor. In exceptional cases, it was perfectly evident that drugs alone could not afford the desired relief; the need was rather for more and better food. Fully realizing this need, and acting under his strongly benevolent impulses, Renaudot not infrequently placed money in the hands of these suffering dispensary patients when they were about to return to their homes. The exact amount of these gifts is not known, but they must in the aggregate have been large; for his biographer says that, in addition to the sums which his more prosperous patients placed in his hands for the benefit of the poor, he contributed annually out of his own purse, toward the maintenance of these free consultations, the sum of 2,000 livres (the “livre” being of about the same value as the franc). The success of the Bureau was so great that in the course of a few months it became necessary that a certain number of physicians should be at the consulting rooms of the institution at all times during the day.