It is of course a french Culture minister - Jack Lang, the man who incarnated the function, after André Malraux - who launched the European days of the cultural and architectural heritage. All around the country, during one week-end a year, some prestigious public monuments are open to the visitors for free, as well as a few private historical places for a small fee. It works greatly in a town like Montpellier. My idea of the Journées du Patrimoine in Paris, Lyon or Marseilles is nightmarish: hours-long waits to visit, with a rising ulcer due to the islamic terrorist threats combined with the fact you don't look Qatari, a pair of rooms of the Elysée Palace (once emptied of anything interesting) or another center of powership, such as an office of the urban traffic management center. Some prefer to spend those hours in their car, on the road to, for example, the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild (even opened to Qataris!), despite this damn rising ulcer due to islamic and non-islamic terrorist threats.
How good to spend those days in a city with a less famous and symbolic heritage, and to forget for a while we enter into the inferior edwylithic era.
I planned to visit the Jardin de la Reine, an ancient part of the botanical garden - most ancient botanical garden of France, built by the city to be opened to the public. There were huge queues, and alas, the lovely bridge I dreamt about as a kid and since a kid, whick linked it to the botanical garden, has been destroyed. The Medecine Faculty was close and much less crowdy. With 2 museums open, an exhibition of a few remarquable books in the library, free access to the Salle des and to the Salle du Conseil, and an exhibition about medecine during the WWI under a spectacular medieval vault.
Some glorious ancestors (XIXth C.). In the middle age they probably wore the rouelle - before the Anschluss of Montpellier. The great Rabelais didn't apparently see medecine professors wearing yellow stars or else, but it was the age of Renaissance and inquisition.
How funny, you can note there was no woman either - nor before, nor later: no woman on the XIXth. C portraits, it just looks like a gallery of Popes in the Vatican. No Tarzan, no Jeanne/Joan.
My father studied there 4 years long or so, with a morrocan grant and success at the exams untill the exams ceased getting success to his eyes.
Guess what?
An academic asked in 1959/60 if the Medecine faculty of Montpellier (one of the first european universities) was founded by "Jews and Arabs". Read HERE (in french), it is very short, but this is the deepest study on the question as far as I know, despite the abundancy of historical elements calling for examination.
The visitors were welcomed by authorities.
This Sir wears an academic dress very similar to the one I could wear if it was a little more affordable and usefull in daily life. I am a praised but unpaid Doctor es Law. I would wear it with lots of lace. Anyone wishing to contribute to the completion of my academic dressing (EXAMPLE) is welcome to contact me. Unlike it is in recent countries and universities, the academic dress is the same in the whole country, it is centuries old, and every element of it is highly symbolic.
The modest-looking man (no academic dress) in the patio is a doctor es-Law, knight of this and that, and the president of the university Montpellier I (Medecine, Law, etc.). He is very sport and lets the academic dress to the locals. It was also a bit warm.
Universities have another clothing tradition, this one for students: the faluche. One can do without it. I'm not so fond of students traditions. A good reason for me to avoid medecine, for example, was that I didn't bear the idea of hazing. Don't talk to me about its use for integration, fraternity or else, many of the academics I know hate each other much more than they hate hairdressers. Why hate hairdressers, you might ask. Just a jewish joke.
Now imagine medieval-looking stone corridors and staircases leading to this:
The anatomy museum is a neo-antic (it was funded in 1794, but the present rooms date from the mid-19thC) wonder, full of light, well kept, and rich enough. Not so modern yet. You might not be extremely interested into the symptoms of syphillis. Take it as historical. No screens, no keyboards. It is full of bones, ancient reconstitutions in real size (tumors, leprosy, congenital anomalies and malformations, etc.), foetus kept in formol, etc. Let's admit that doctors work with bodies or corpses more than with screens and keyboards.
The entrance of the museum is forbidden to children, journées du patrimoine or not. Don't ask why.
Wax figures illustrating the progression of various illnesses (collection Dupont).
There are antic mumies... including a baby.
All the main bones on well organized shelves. Radius, cubitus, tibia, etc.
A foot, with the veins... I bet it was an art to prepare it.
Skelettons and bones with anomalies...
Skulls with lesions, tumors, bullet hole...
If a teenager doesn't want after all to study medecine, don't tell me it's because of Obamacare. It is easier to understand the Hippocratic oath (in its modern reading) than to know what fighting illness and suffering will be like. I guess Americans students don't have to take an oath... In France there are several kinds of oaths, following where you get your diploma. Here's a local one (the Hippocratic oath, of the Université Montpellier 1): the ex-students swears, before his teachers and in front of the Supreme being, to be faithfull and honnest, to provide free cares to the poor and not to ask for more money than his work deserves, etc.
« En présence des Maîtres de cette École, de mes chers condisciples et devant l'effigie d'Hippocrate, je promets et je jure, au nom de l'Être suprême, d'être fidèle aux lois de l'honneur et de la probité dans l'exercice de la médecine.
Je donnerai mes soins gratuits à l'indigent et n'exigerai jamais un salaire au-dessus de mon travail. Admis dans l'intérieur des maisons, mes yeux n'y verront pas ce qui s'y passe ; ma langue taira les secrets qui me seront confiés et mon état ne servira pas à corrompre les mœurs ni à favoriser le crime. Respectueux et reconnaissant envers mes Maîtres, je rendrai à leurs enfants l'instruction que j'ai reçue de leurs pères.
Que les hommes m'accordent leur estime si je suis fidèle à mes promesses. Que je sois couvert d'opprobre et méprisé de mes confrères si j'y manque. »
As for me, I'd rather make (paid, thanks) researches about medecine and museal legislation, and not give my body to the faculty, which is very selfish and immature I know.
Organs for study...
What is this mysterious knife? Have a closer look...
More historical datas, in french, HERE.
Good to get out of this charming museum, though...
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