Clergymen and Doctors: Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches.Anonymous
History
Clergymen and Doctors: Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches.
Anonymous
Clergy; Medicine -- Anecdotes; Medicine -- Humor; Pastoral theology -- Anecdotes; Physicians
royal family, who died soon after of a local inflammation. The
Parliament of Paris now interfered, and proscribed the practice; and
two persons having died after transfusion at Rome, the Pope also issued
a prohibitory edict. Since the publication in 1824, however, of Dr.
Blundell's _Physiological and Pathological Researches_, transfusion has
been recognised as a legitimate operation in obstetric surgery--the
object being to obviate the effects of exhaustion from extreme loss of
blood by hæmorrhage.
FATHER ANDRE BOULANGER.
France has produced several entertaining preachers, among whom was
André Boulanger, better known as "little Father André," who died about
the middle of the seventeenth century. His character has been variously
drawn. He is by some represented as a buffoon in the pulpit; but others
more judiciously observe, that he only indulged his natural genius, and
uttered humorous and lively things to keep the attention of his
audience awake. "He told many a bold truth," says the author of _Guerre
des Auteurs, Anciens et Modernes_, "that sent bishops to their
dioceses, and made many a coquette blush. He possessed the art of
biting while he smiled; and more ably combated vice by his ingenious
satire, than by those vague apostrophes which no one takes to himself.
While others were straining their minds to catch at sublime thoughts
which no one understood, he lowered his talents to the most humble
situations, and to the minutest things." In fact, Father André seems to
have been a sort of seventeenth century Spurgeon, as two samples may
serve to show. In one of his sermons he compared the four doctors of
the Latin Church to the four kings of cards. "St. Augustine," said he,
"is the King of Hearts, for his great charity; St. Ambrose is the King
of Clubs (_treflé_), by the flowers of his eloquence; St. Gregory is
the King of Diamonds, for his strict regularity; and St. Jerome is the
King of Spades (_pique_), for his piquant style." The Duke of Orleans
once dared Father André to employ any ridiculous expression about him.
This, however, the good father did, very adroitly. He addressed the
Duke thus: "_Foin de vous, Monseigneur; foin de moi; foin de tous les
auditeurs_." He saved himself from the consequences of his jest, by
taking for his text the seventh verse of the tenth chapter of Isaiah,
where it is said, "All the people are grass"--_Foin_ in French
signifying hay, and being also an interjection, "Fie upon!"
AN INTERCESSOR FOR HIMSELF.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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