ABSTRACT
In the France of the 1780s issues that had long been the focus of polite debate took on new urgency thanks to the rapidly evolving political crisis, which entailed simultaneously an intensification of reform efforts by the crown and a sharpening of public criticism. The decline of the Paris salon was one indicator of a breakdown of accepted standards of politesse in the republic of letters. 1 A new harshness of tone in scientific controversy was also frequently lamented.2 In medicine, the founding of the Societe royale de medecine embodied the crown's effort to respond effectively to threats to public health identified by an ever more assertive medical community. It also signified the emergence of a new, official arbiter of medicine and in so doing catalyzed conflicts over the legitimacy of competing visions of medical science. The appearance of the Societe royale de medecine is crucial to the history of vitalism as it is to all other features of French medical history in the last decade of the Ancien Regime. Relations between Paris and Montpellier had long been troubled, but this first great venture to reorganize and centralize the institutions of French medicine engendered new conflicts and, in turn, a growing sense of regional defensiveness among Montpellierains.
