The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-06-08
phrslclans 2 Hundred Years Ago.

| At the universities, medical students
 were not permitted to go out without
 their scholastic cloaks-a regulation
 that still obtains in Spain. That the number of students has enormously multiplied may be seen from the fact
 that the little university of Giessen,
 with scarcely any medical school at all, | has always more students than had
 Halle in the days of the famous Hoff-
 mann. In the middle of the last cen
 tury Wurzburg had at one time but
 three medical students, while to-day it
 has in the neighborhood of 800. Even then it was complained that on account
 of the number of students there was an educated proletariat arising, and in 1791 1t was proposed, in Austria, that the
 rush for study should be suppressed.
 Among the Continental students the
 revels and bad behavior of past cen
 turies were not to any great extent cor
 rected; fights and debauchery were
 very common, and all sorts of orgies
 and bacchanals prevailed. The pro-
 fessors were in large measure indepen-
 dent of the state, and single individ-
 ual often represented a number of
 branches now taught by special chairs.
 When indisposed to lecture, they sim
 ply posted on the blackboard "Hodie
 non legitur" and this was the end of
 the matter. In TIT Vienna had 147
 medical teachers, and in Germany there
 were two to every thirty-nine students
 That in the last century one man ac-
 complished more than great number of average teachers do to-day is amply
 demonstrated by the lives of Boer- haave, Haller, and others Then. too.
 the Latin tongue was generally en- ployed for purposes of instruction. though surgeons for the most part lec- tured in the vernacular; Cullen, in 1770, was the first in Great Britain to deliver purely medical lectures in Eng fish; and as the clergy gradually re- tired from the ranks of the profession. Latin more and more fell into disuse. Strange to say, as the clerical influence waned, the Jews began to enter medi- cine, the movement beginning about 1791 in France, under the promulgation of "civil equality" ideas previously the Hebrews had been an almost uni versally suppressed people, and in Ber- lin were permitted to enter and leave the city only by one gate, and were forbidden to learn or write pure Ger man, in consequence thereof their dia- lect was Hebraic-Teutonic iargon that even to-day prevails in some portions of western Europe. Educated Jews were few in number, since attendance upon universities was ordinarily denied them, although long before they had been admitted to Salamanca, Toledo. and Montpelier. In Austria the prohibition was not removed until | 1789, and even then so bitter was the prejudice against the Semitic race that | the clergy protested vigorously. It | was the same clerical body that in 1867 | protested with the greatest vehemence | against allowing Hebrew physicians to | pass through the gates of Wurtemburg | without paying toll, declaring it was | better to die with Christ than be cured | by Jews who were aided by the devil"
 The physician of the last century was 1t least on occasions of moment very different from other men, and to be recognized by his dress. A cap was placed upon his head when he grad lated, in recognition of the fact that physicians at an earlier period belonged o the learned or clerical professions; md in later life he wore a purpHsh or carlet cloak (to distinguish him from awyers whose professional color was yellow, and from theologians who then
 IS now sported the sombre blacE)
 The regulation full dress costume Of he English physician of the last cen ury demanded a well-powdered wig, fix coat, knee brooches with stockings, ,ucl1led shoes lace rufiies, cap, and cane. to which, in cold weather was added aemuff-to preserve is delicacy of touoh.-Medical Age. |