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CLINICAL TEACHING. 413
of ill-will from the medical faculty, with which he
lived at continual feud, as he would not fall in with
the exclusive party spirit which animated that body.
To such a point did they carry their opposition that
after the death of his patron the powerful Cardinal
RICHELIEU, RENAUDOT'S policlinic, which had been a
source of so much benefit to the poorer population, was
closed.* This resulted in the medical faculty taking the
duty upon itself of maintaining a similar institution. It was
arranged that six doctors, three old and three young, should
be commissioned to examine and supply with medicines
twice every week in the Ecole de Medecine patients able
to get about: the attendance was to be gratis. Surgical
operations they were either to undertake themselves or else
to get a skilful surgeon to perform. In difficult cases they
were bound to hold consultations among themselves: the
Dean of the Faculty was charged to be frequently present
at these. Poor patients not in a condition to come to the
consultation were visited and treated gratis in their dwell­
ings. The bachelors, in other words the senior students
of medicine, were obliged to attend the policlinical consul­
tations : they were occupied there in writing down the
prescriptions dictated by the doctors and in rendering
other services. They also had to be present at the medical
visits to the Hotel Dieu or some other hospital.t These
policlinical studies lasted for two years. Stationary clinics
were not instituted in Paris until the end of the 18th
century.
Even in Germany the first clinics did not come into
existence before the middle of last century. It is true that,
on the occasion of the foundation of the University of
Gottingen, WERLHOF proposed that a clinic should be
associated with it, but in vain. The circumstances were
similar in the case of the medical faculty of Vienna in
1718. F. HOFFMANN, of Halle, even pronounced a decided
4* GILLES DE LA TOURETTE: Theophraste Renaudot, Paris 1884.
f HAZON op. cit.—SABATIER op. cit.