French physicians were never very well paid. The surgeons of Charlemagne
were tolerably well recompensed. Ambrose Pare, the great surgeon, and
inventor of ligatures (for peculiar arteries),--previous to whose time the
arteries were seared with a hot iron; otherwise the patient bled to
death,--received 5,000 francs for ligaturing one artery. Louis XIV. gave
his surgeons 75,000 crowns each for successfully performing upon him a
surgical operation.
Upon the confinement of Maria Louise, second wife of the great Napoleon,
four physicians--Bourdier, Corvisat, Dubois, and Ivan--received the sum of
$20,000. Dubois was the principal, and received one half of the
amount,--not a very extravagant remuneration; but then Napoleon held a
mean opinion of physicians in general, and this fee was not to be wondered
at. Dupuytren, the distinguished French surgeon, left a property of
$1,580,000. Hahnemann, who, in 1785, at Dresden, abandoned physic in
disgust, afterwards went to Paris, and at the time of his death was
literally besieged with patients, reaping a reward for his labors of not
less than $40,000 per annum. Boerhaave was a successful practitioner, born
at Leyden, and left, at his death, $200,000 from private practice. John
Stow, the eminent antiquarian writer, whose misfortunes compelled him to
beg his daily bread at the age of eighty, informs us that "half a crown
(English) was looked upon as a large fee in Holland, while in England, at
that same time, a physician scorned to touch any fee but gold, and
surgeons were still more exorbitant."
In Spain, until a very remote period, the priests continued to exercise
the double office of priest and physician, and some of them were
proficient in surgery; and though they fixed no stipulated price for their
medical services, they usually managed to get two fleeces from the one
shearing, and on certain occasions dispose of the carcass also, for their
own pecuniary advantages, as the following will show:--
Anthony Gavin, formerly a Catholic priest of Spain, says, "I saw Fran.
Alfaro, a Jew, in Lisbon, who told me that he was known to be very rich,
when in Seville, where the priests finally stripped him of all his wealth,
and cast him into the Inquisition, where they kept him four years, under
some pretence, and finally liberated him, that he might accumulate more
property. After three years' trade, having again collected considerable
wealth, he was again imprisoned and his wealth confiscated by the
priest-doctors, but let off, with the order to wear the mark of San Benito
(picture of a man in the midst of the fire of hell) for six months.
[Illustration: A SAN BENITO PIG.]
"But Alfaro fled from the city, and finding a pig near the gate, he
slipped the San Benito over the pig's neck, and, sending him into the
town, made his escape. 'Now I am poor,' he added, 'nobody wants to
imprison me.'"