In one of the previous posts I discussedHangmen of ParisToday I will write about professionals who have killed many more people – doctors.
Anyone who has read Yair Garbuz's immortal book "Paris Tel Aviv" will surely remember his visit to the Museum of Medicine in Paris and his impressions of the various medical devices. From this visit, he drew the obvious conclusion that the guillotine was, in all likelihood, an ancient remedy for headaches. Indeed, the medicine of the 17th and 18th centuries was particularly primitive, and any medical procedure, even the simplest, could end in the death of the patient. Therefore, it is not surprising that in 1686, when Louis XIV Forced to undergo surgery to remove hemorrhoids, all of Paris held its breath…
Nuns who lived in Saint Cyr near Versailles even went so far as to write the song “God Save the King” and sing it while the king was being operated on (without any anesthesia, of course). God heard their prayer, the surgery was successful, the king returned to his throne, and the nuns’ song became a hit. An Englishman who heard the hymn decided to bring it to his country, and about 60 years later, the nuns’ hymn was transformed into the famous hymn “God Save the King.” And so, as a result of the king’s hemorrhoids France The British national anthem, which is sung to this day, was created. Indeed, history has a special sense of humor.
Dr. Pagon exterminates the family of Louis XIV
But let's get back to Louis XIV. One of the king's surgeons was the doctor Guy Crescent Fagon (14-1638). Guy began his career as the director of the botanical garden in Paris and, thanks to his wit and knowledge, managed to advance and become the king's chief physician. Fagon believed in only two remedies, bloodletting and vomiting, and thanks to these remedies he managed to almost eliminate almost the entire French royal family.
His first victim was the Queen of France, Maria Theresa (1638-1683), who suffered from an ulcer on her hand. Instead of simply draining the ulcer with a medical procedure, Pagon decided to drain her blood, which caused the ulcer to burst. At the same time, the emetic he prescribed caused the queen to suffocate and she died at the age of 43. Despite this, and perhaps thanks to the successful operation he performed on the king 3 years later, Pagon managed to keep his job and for about 30 years engaged in the killing of lower-ranking nobles.
In 1711, the dynasty seemed assured, as the king had one son, three grandsons (one of whom was king of Spain) and two great-grandsons. However, within a year all this had changed and the Bourbon dynasty was on the verge of extinction. The first to die of smallpox was the son of King Louis, who was called the “Grand Dauphin”. A year later, one after the other, his heir, the Duke of Burgundy, his wife and their son the Duke of Brittany.
What all these deaths had in common was the treatment the patients received, bloodletting and emetics, which were liberally administered by Dr. Pagon. And so, within about two years, Louis XIV was left with one and only heir in the form of the two-year-old Duke of Anjou. However, shortly after his eldest brother died, it was discovered that he too had rubella. The person who saved his life was the Duchesse de Ventadour (14-1654), who can be seen in the photo above.
The Duchess, who served as the royal family's governess, understood that if the Duke of Anjou received the same treatment as the rest of his family, his chances of survival were not great, so she "kidnapped" the Duke from his doctors and locked him in a room in the Palace of Versailles. There she treated the child with "grandmother's remedies" such as chicken soup. To her delight and the joy of the king, after a few days the child overcame the measles and recovered. That child was to inherit the crown of France in 1715 and was given the name Louis XV. Since he was already an orphan of both his parents, he saw the Duchesse de Ventador as a substitute for a mother and called her, until the day she died at the age of 15, as "Mother Ventador."
Although his treatments nearly killed the entire royal family, Dr. Pagon remained in his position until Louis XIV died of gangrene in the leg (apparently he cannot be blamed for this). Pagon spent the last three years of his life caring for the king's botanical garden, which we know as the Jardin de Plantes and which even has a flower named Pagonia named after him. If there is a lesson from this story, it is that even in our day, it is advisable to stay away from doctors as much as possible and not accept a single word they say as Sinaiticus. In fact, during the great doctors' strike in the 14s, the mortality rate dropped dramatically...