More about France, Particularly Paris

The first book I read on my new Nook was The Greater Journey, Americans in Paris, by David McCullough, whom I saw on C-SPAN in the interview about the book. McCullough is an excellent writer who does a great deal of research for a book. He said he could have written several more books with this research. In April of 2008 I particularly enjoyed his John Adams, quite a sizable tome. The Greater Journey wasn’t quite so challenging. In fact, it was easy to read.

These Americans in Paris were, first of all, in the early 1800’s, medical students. Before anesthesia was used, French doctors excelled at cutting, off or out, parts of the body without evidence of concern for the patient. They went from patient to patient without even washing their hands! When the doctors checked patients in large wards of many beds in close proximity, as many as 100 students crowded around to observe. One student once climbed on the doctor’s back to get a look. The doctor shook him off.

One advantage for the American medical students in Paris was that they could study the ailments of women, whereas an American woman wouldn’t let a male doctor see her body. One woman declared she’d rather die than be examined by a male doctor. And she did die.

My great, great uncle, John Berrien Lindsley, was one of these medical students studying in Paris. But I can’t believe he did so without sympathetic concern for patients. He came from a religious home that was humanitarian in its outlook. In the latter years of the1800’s, Berrien was credited for ridding the South of cholera and founding the first Public Health program in the country.

Overlapping the time medicine drew foreigners to Paris, the Louvre did too. Artists came from various countries to copy paintings in the Louvre, in an effort to learn more about their chosen field of work. They numbered too many to mention them all here, but I will talk about one American who had never, at that time, lived in America, John Singer Sargent. When he was just a young man, other artists who watched him paint declared him a genius early on. This might have been why he was: McCullough narrates that Sargent’s earliest memory was his seeing a cobblestone of a bright red hue that fascinated him when his nurse took him out for his daily airing as a mere baby. This baby was not quite so mere as most, it seems, for he remembered the red cobblestone and thought about it all the time, apparently. Each day he begged the nurse to show it to him again. This must have been in Italy, for the cobblestone was at an address with a “Via” in it. As some of you might have guessed by now, of course, I added this story to my essay about earliest memories in this blog. I love the red cobblestone story.

Much more happened in this book than things medical and artistic. I believe there must not be any bloody war scenes anywhere as in this volume. I heartily recommend it to all those interested in medicine or art or war. ♥