ctor of the
period and his medications. Napoleon believed that Baron Larrey was the
most virtuous, intelligent, useful, and unselfish man in existence; in
fact, it is doubtful if any man of his time commanded from this truly
great man so much admiration or respect, either for bravery, courage,
intelligence, or activity, as the great and simple-minded Larrey. As
observed by Napoleon of his bravest general,--poor Marshal Ney, the
bravest of the brave, the rear guard of the grand army, the last man to
leave Russian soil,--Ney was a lion in action, but a fool in the closet.
All his generals had some great distinguishing characteristic, beyond
which was a barren waste, a vacuity, but too apparent to a man of
Napoleon's discernment. But the cool, unflinching bravery of Larrey,
that did not require the stimulus of the fight or the phrenzy of strife
to bring it to the surface and keep it alive; bravery and intelligence
alike active under showers of shot and shell or in the thunders of
charging squadrons; in the face of infective epidemics or
contagiousness, walking about in these scenes in which his own life was
as much at stake as that of the meanest soldier, with the same cool
exercise of his intelligence that he exhibited in the organization and
superintendence of his hospitals in the time of peace; always the same,
untiring, unmurmuring, brave, studious, observing, unflinching in his
duties, unselfish; whether in the burning sands of Egypt or in the snowy
steppes of Russia, in the marshy plains of Italy or in the highlands of
Spain, he always found him the same, and his notes and observations,
from his first government service on the Newfoundland coast to his last,
always showed him the same laborer and student in the field of medicine.
And yet at St. Helena we find Napoleon refusing to take remedies for
internal disease whose real nature was unknown, and only toward the end
did he consent to take anything, and then only when seeing that the end
was approaching, and more from a kindly desire to express his
appreciation of the services of his attendants, and not to wound their
feelings, than from any hope of assistance. Napoleon had not neglected
the study of medicine any more than he had the study of every other
science. This is evident from the instance related as taking place
during the march of the grand army from the confines of Poland into
Russia, in 1812, when dysentery became very prevalent, of his inviting
several of