Of this same Felix, the predecessor of Mareschal, the friend as well as surgeon of Louis XIV., Madame de Sevigné relates that, being called upon to bleed a courtier who had fallen and bruised himself in the King’s apartment, he so wounded the artery that a great operation was on the instant required. "I know not,” says the accomplished writer, "which was most to be pitied, the unfortunate subject of such an operation, or the first surgeon of his Majesty who opened the artery in bleeding[1].”
In the eighteenth century surgery assumed a more elevated rank than it had ever held in the civilized world. In France, Mareschal and La Peyronie laid the foundation of the French Academy; and the contributions of Prrir, its first director and president, Le Dran, Louis, Quesnai, Morand, Hevin, and a host of emulative and ardent men, associated by the humanizing spirit of practical science, excited the admiration of surrounding nations, and secured for themselves and their labours the gratitude of posterity.
The value of the French Memoirs, commenced in 1743, consists in the copious assemblage of original cases, and the practical illustration of them by comparison and induction. All that regards historical matter of fact is excellent, and this is their principal and peculiar merit. Their defects are those of the
- ↑ See Appendix, Note I.
