s company to take the title of
"Comediens du Roi," and bestowed on them a pension of 7,000 livres,
thereby showing how little he was influenced by the clamors of the
poet's enemies, though attacking his mind on a weak point.

In the month of September, 1665, the king having commanded such an
entertainment to be prepared, the sketch or impromptu called "L'Amour
Medecin" was, in the course of five days, composed, got up, as the
players call it, and represented. In this sketch, slight as it was,
Moliere contrived to declare war against a new and influential body of
enemies. This was the medical faculty, which he had slightly attacked
in the "Festin de Pierre." Every science has its weak points, and is
rather benefited than injured by the satire which, putting pedantry
and quackery out of fashion, opens the way to an enlightened pursuit
of knowledge. The medical faculty at Paris, in the middle of the
seventeenth century, was at a very low ebb. Almost every physician was
attached to some particular form of treatment, which he exercised on
his patients without distinction, and which probably killed in as many
instances as it effected a cure. Their exterior, designed, doubtless,
to inspire respect by its peculiar garb and formal manner, was in
itself matter of ridicule. They ambled on mules through the city of
Paris, attired in an antique and grotesque dress, the jest of its
laughter-loving people, and the dread of those who were unfortunate
enough to be their patients. The consultations of these sages were
conducted in a barbarous Latinity, or if they condescended to use the
popular language, they disfigured it with unnecessary profusion of
technical terms, or rendered it unintelligible by a prodigal tissue of
scholastic formalities of expression.

The venerable dulness and pedantic ignorance of the faculty was
incensed at the ridicule cast upon it in "L'Amour Medecin," especially
as four of its most distinguished members were introduced under Greek
names, invented by Boileau for his friend's use. The consultation held
by these sages, which respects everything save the case of the
patient--the ceremonious difficulty with which they are at first
brought to deliver their opinions--the vivacity and fury with which
each finally defends his own, menacing the instant death of the
patient if any other treatment be observed, seemed all to the public
highly comical, and led many reflecting men to think Lisette was not
far wrong in c