Officiers de santé: the second-class doctors of nineteenth-century France

In the last decade of the eighteenth century medical education and medical practice in France were in a parlous state. The Revolution had left the whole edifice of the art of healing in ruins. The Constitution of 3 September 1791 had laid down the principle of a complete re-organization of public education to take account of the changed conditions of French society.1 In 1792, however, after the radical faction of the leaders of the Revolution had come to power, the universities, learned societies, and the teaching corporations were abolished. Thus all the official teaching and licensing institutions of the ancien regime were swept away.2 A state of chaos resulted inevitably from the absence ofgoverning bodies. The administrators ofsome Frenchdpartements, anxious to protect the public from some of the worst excesses of charlatans, set up unofficial examination boards. Eventually the University of Montpellier illegally issued provisional licences to persons who had passed its examinations, and the two other French medical faculties of Paris and Strasbourg followed suit. These provisional registrations were officially recognized in 1797.8 The need for medical personnel for the army and navy became increasingly urgent and in the first place a system ofmedical education had to be established.