Free The Physiology of Taste by Anthelme Jean Brillat-Savarin Page B

returned to France, having fulfilled his duties. He passed almost unharmed through the bad days of 1793, and was elected Mayor of Versailles, where he is still remembered for his active and yet paternal and kindly administration.
    Before long the Directory recalled him to military medicine: Bonaparte appointed him one of three general inspectors of the armies’ medical services. There Coste was unfailingly the friend, protector, and father of younger men who prepared for the same career as his. Finally he was named royal physician at the Invalides, and he practiced there until his death.
    Such faithful services could not go unrewarded under the government of the Bourbons, and Louis XVIII did no more than his just duty in conferring on M. Coste the order of Saint-Michel.
    The doctor died a few years ago, leaving an honored memory, a fortune largely philosophical in content, and a single child, wifeof that M. de Lalot whose colorful and profound eloquence in the Chamber of Deputies still did not prevent his political shipwreck.
    One day when we were dining with M. Favre, the priest of Saint-Laurent, our compatriot Dr. Coste told me of his lively quarrel, that same morning, with Count de Cessac, at that time minister and director of the War Department, over some economizing the count wanted to do to curry favor with Napoleon.
    This penny pinching was to consist of withholding from sick soldiers half their daily allotments of bread-and-water gruel, and of washing the lint packing from their bandages so that it could be used a second or third time.
    The doctor had protested with violence against these plans, which he qualified as
abominable
, and he was still so full of the quarrel at dinner that he fell into another rage, exactly as if the object of his wrath were there before him.
    I never knew whether the count was really dissuaded from carrying out his little plan, or simply left it hidden in his brief case, but what is certain is that the sick soldiers continued to drink all the gruel they wanted, and that their bandages once used were thrown away.
    About 1780 Dr. Bordier, born near Ambérieux, came to practice medicine in Paris. His technique was pleasant, and he had a sure sense of diagnosis and an optimistic approach.
    He was named professor in the College of Medicine. His manner was simple, but his lectures were fatherly and rewarding. Honors sought him out when he thought least of them, and he was made doctor to the Empress Marie-Louise. But he enjoyed himself only a short time in this position: the Empire dissolved, and the doctor himself was carried off by a disease of the leg which he had fought all his life.
    Dr. Bordier was a contented man, with a trustworthy and benevolent nature.
    Toward the end of the eighteenth century appeared Dr. Bichat … Bichat whose every written word carries the sign of genius, who used up his life to advance science, who united in himself a vital enthusiasm with a deep patience for more limited souls, and who, dead at thirty, deserved great public memorials to his name.
    Later, Dr. Montègre brought into the clinics of Paris his philosopher’s spirit. He directed with skill the publication of THE HEALTH GAZETTE , and died when he was forty, in the West Indies, where he had gone to complete his projected works on yellow fever and the
vomito negro
.
    At this moment (1825), Dr. Richerand stands on the top rung of the ladder of surgical medicine, and his ELEMENTS OF PHYSIOLOGY has been translated into every tongue. He is invested with the highest possible confidence, named as he was at an early age professor in the Paris College of Medicine. No man has a more comforting manner than he, nor a gentler hand … nor a surer scalpel.
    Dr. Récamier, 3 professor in the same school, sits at the side of his compatriot.
    The present thus cared for, the future looks bright. Under the direction of such teachers, youths from the same countryside of Belley study to follow their distinguished