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436 RECENT TIMES.
The curriculum which was published soon after this
diverged from these principles mainly in the period of
study for medical and surgical students being fixed at four
years, and a course of studies being arranged applicable
to both classes in most of the departments, the only difference
being that the medici had to spend a longer time on
materia medica, chemistry and internal medicine, while the
chirurg had to enter more deeply into surgery and the
subjects associated with it, and to give proof of this in
examinations.
So in this way at last in Austria and Germany, as was
already the case in other states, surgery had assigned to it
a more dignified position. Physicians and surgeons were ^
recognized as two classes of doctors enjoying an equal,|
rank, in possession of an equally sound education, and f
differing only in the kind of work assigned them. At
the same time there arose an inferior class of practitioners
whose acquirements were of a lower order, and who were
intended chiefly for attendance upon the peasantry. They
practised as doctors for both internal and external diseases.
The opposition which had hitherto existed between
physicians and surgeons was now transferred to the more
highly-educated practitioners on the one hand and the less i
thoroughly trained physician-surgeons on the other. Informing
an opinion upon the state of affairs which was thus 1
produced, we must not forget that a shifting of positionj
had taken place among the factors in question which |
justified many things which would before have been inde-|
fensible and wrong.
It is, then, certain that the surgeons of the 17th century ,
occupied a somewhat low position from an educational
point of view; but have we any reason to suppose that it
was otherwise with the physicians of that period ? In the
eyes of many a clear image of fresh and living nature was
perverted by the distorting atmosphere of a lifeless desert
of unprofitable learning. "They understood their GALEN?
but not their patients," as MONTAIGNE said. The figure of
Dr. DiAFOlRUS, in " Le Malade Imaginaire" of M0LIERE>