ABSTRACT
For over two hundred years it has been a commonplace to observe that in the eighteenth century Montpellier was, as one historian recently put it, the "premier medical city of provincial France. " 1 Contemporary boosters of Montpellier delighted in pointing to the town's preeminence in medicine, and historians have echoed their praise of the town's medical personalities and institutions.2 Most striking is the fact that, then and now, Montpellier has been characterized as a .. rival" to Paris, thus constituting a singular case in modern French history where a provincial cultural center has offered genuine competition to the capital. Montpellier was able to fulfill this role thanks to certain advantages. Within Languedoc Montpellier was an important town, competing with Toulouse for leadership of France's largest province. As the residence of the intendant, it was the province's administrative center. The Estates of Languedoc assembled in Montpellier annually. The city was also home to a bishop, a military governor, and magistrates of a Cour des Comptes, aides et finances. 3 Not least important, the town had beauty, and exercised charm over visitors who came for amusement and therapy. Yet in other ways Montpellier labored under real disadvantages as a cultural center and was an unlikely place to constitute in any way a rival to Paris. With its thirty thousand some residents, Montpellier was modest in size, ranking third (below Toulouse and Nimes) even in Languedoc.4 If it enjoyed a genuine economic prosperity, based largely on viticulture, textiles, and an assortment of small-scale industries, this prosperity was often interrupted.5 Montpellier also had few publishing enterprises and hence was cut off from this all-important mode of communication in the republic of letters. Finally, the town was 10 hard traveling days from the city that, as one physician put it, was the center of "the sciences and the fine arts. "6 Yet, in medicine, rival to Paris it was.
