ntellectual work?"
queried one of the three celebrated authorities, addressing Raphael. He
was a square-headed man, with a large frame and energetic organization,
which seemed to mark him out as superior to his two rivals.

"I made up my mind to kill myself with debauchery, after spending three
years over an extensive work, with which perhaps you may some day occupy
yourselves," Raphael replied.

The great doctor shook his head, and so displayed his satisfaction. "I
was sure of it," he seemed to say to himself. He was the illustrious
Brisset, the successor of Cabanis and Bichat, head of the Organic
School, a doctor popular with believers in material and positive
science, who see in man a complete individual, subject solely to the
laws of his own particular organization; and who consider that his
normal condition and abnormal states of disease can both be traced to
obvious causes.

After this reply, Brisset looked, without speaking, at a middle-sized
person, whose darkly flushed countenance and glowing eyes seemed to
belong to some antique satyr; and who, leaning his back against the
corner of the embrasure, was studying Raphael, without saying a word.
Doctor Cameristus, a man of creeds and enthusiasms, the head of the
"Vitalists," a romantic champion of the esoteric doctrines of Van
Helmont, discerned a lofty informing principle in human life, a
mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon which mocks at the scalpel,
deceives the surgeon, eludes the drugs of the pharmacopoeia, the
formulae of algebra, the demonstrations of anatomy, and derides all
our efforts; a sort of invisible, intangible flame, which, obeying some
divinely appointed law, will often linger on in a body in our opinion
devoted to death, while it takes flight from an organization well fitted
for prolonged existence.

A bitter smile hovered upon the lips of the third doctor, Maugredie, a
man of acknowledged ability, but a Pyrrhonist and a scoffer, with the
scalpel for his one article of faith. He would consider, as a concession
to Brisset, that a man who, as a matter of fact, was perfectly well was
dead, and recognize with Cameristus that a man might be living on after
his apparent demise. He found something sensible in every theory, and
embraced none of them, claiming that the best of all systems of medicine
was to have none at all, and to stick to facts. This Panurge of the
Clinical Schools, the king of observers, the great investigator, a great
sceptic