ABSTRACT
In the late 1760s and 1770s, years that Bordeu and his disciples devoted to the health anxieties of Parisian mondains, Barthez lived and worked in Montpellier, absorbed in the institutional battles of the University of Medicine and in the wide-ranging labors of the medical erudit that would eventuate in his great vitalist synthesis, Nouveaux e/emens de Ia science de l'homme, published in 1778.1 After Barthez took up his appointment in Montpellier in 1760, he quickly became embroiled in the institutional and professional conflicts that wracked town and university in these years. Barthez was an outspoken member of the faction of four professors, also including Lamure, Venel, and Le Roy, that opposed giving a greater role in the life of the university to the town doctors of Montpellier. He also earnestly supported the university's efforts to establish regular clinical teaching at the Hotel-Dieu Saint-Eloi. In these battles Barthez showed himself a combative defender of his own prerogatives and those of his profession: he took as personal affronts the town doctors' efforts to put themselves on a par with the medical professors and the hospital authorities' antagonism to the presence of physicians in their establishment. A nasty incident of 1764 indicated how implacable Barthez could be when he believed his personal and professional dignity under assault. In that year Barthez resigned from the Societe royale des sciences de Montpellier when he judged himself insulted in a dispute with the local notable and president of the society, Charles d' Aigrefeuille. A clear rupture between the society and the university opened up when Barthez was seconded in his action not only by his usual allies Venel and Le Roy but also by Chancellor Imbert, who objected to a reproof given Barthez by the learned company as "compromising to the corps of professors. "2 Although two of Barthez's colleagues returned to the society in short order, he himself did not. Only years later did he agree to be reinstated and even then he quickly resigned active membership in favor of the position of veteran.3
