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FRANCE. 541
The Officiers de Sante formed an inferior class of prac­
titioners. They were not bound to furnish any proof of
having received a general education, and they were per­
mitted to engage in,medical practice after only three years
study at a medical school. But they also might be excused
any such study, and it sufficed if they spent five years'
working at a hospital, or six years in the service of a doctor.
The examination which they passed dealt with anatomy,
the elements of medicine, materia medica, and surgery, and
was carried on exclusively in French. The doctors were
allowed to settle down anywhere, the Officiers de Sante
only in the country and in the department in which they
were licensed to practise. They were, moreover, obliged in
serious cases of illness and in the greater operations to call
a doctor into consultation.
CARRET, the legislator, apologized for the establishment
of this class of practitioners in the following words : " Les
habitants des campagnes ayant des mceurs plus pures que
celles des villes, ont des maladies plus simples qui exigent
par ce motif moins d'instructions et moins d'apprets."
The Officiers de Sante were trained chiefly at the hospital
schools which came into existence in several towns of
France,, and received a definite organization under the
name of £coles secondaires.
The lower class of apothecaries also received the requisite
instruction at these establishments, while for the pharma­
ceutists of the first class three special schools were founded
at Paris, Montpellier, and Strassburg which were, in many
respects, in close relation with the medical schools at those
places. The schools of medicine last mentioned were in
1808 once more promoted to the position of medical facul­
ties, and were incorporated with the University of France.
This creation of Napoleon was not a university in our
sense of the word, but, as it were, the headquarters of all
the establishments and boards of education throughout the
country. It was approximately equivalent to what is now
known as a department for the regulation of education. A