In 1774, he was created joint chancellor of the university, with the certainty of succeeding, singly to. the office on the death of his colleague, which paned in 1786. He afterwards took the degree of doctor in civil law, and was appointed counsellor to the Supreme Court of Aids at Montpellier. In he was induced to fix his residence in Pihis, having been nominated consulting physician to the. . King, with a brevet of counsellor of state, .and a pen sion of a hundred. leuis. Honours now crowded up on him ; he was admitted free associate of the Aca demies of Sciences and of Inscriptions, and appoint ed first physician to the Duke of Orleans, in the room of Tronchin. His reputation increased in pro portion as his merits could be displayed on a wider theatre. He practised as physician at Paris for nearly ten years. and received the most flattering testimonials of public approbation.
This brilliant career was suddenly interrupted by the great political revolution which broke out at this period, and by which the interests of every indivi dual in France, however tranquil his pursuits, or ob scure his station, were more or less immediately af fected.
It was the occasion of Barthez quitting Paris, and seeking in his native province that tranquillity and repose, which the stormy aspect of the times for bade him to hope for in a more conspicuous station, holding, as he did, opinions so much at variance with the new order of things. Though he had lost the greater part of his fortune, acquired by so much la bour, and was deprived of the honours to which he possessed so just a claim, he determined, upon his re tiring to Carcassone, that he would practise his pro fession gratuitously, and devote all his leisure hours to the speculative studies connected with it, which had been the ruling passion of his life. It was in this retreat that he gave to the world his Nouvelle Mechanique des Mouvemens de I' Homme et des Ani mans, which appeared in 1798, in quarto; and it was at this period, also, that he composed his work on Gout, a disease to which his attention had been natu rally directed, in consequence of his having frequent ly suffered under its attacks.
An occasion soon occurred which demanded his services, and he once more emerged from his retire ment, and repaired to the head-quarters of the army of the Eastern Pyrenees, where a contagious fever, originating from the accumulation of sick in the mi litary hospitals of Perpignan, was committing great ravages. The progress of this contagion was effec tually arrested by the adoption of the measures which he advised.
• On. the re-establishment of the College .of Medi cine at Montpellier, Barthez was naturally looked up to as the person best calculated to revive its former fame. But age and infirmity operated to dissuade hint from resuming the laborious office of a teacher ; and he was accordingly nominated honorary pro fessor. It was in this capacity that he pronounced,
in 1801, his Discours sur le genie d' Hippocrate, on the solemn inauguration of the bust of the father of medicine in that school. In the following year, he received several marks of favour from the new go vernment under Bonaparte ; he was nominated lar physician to the government, and afterwards con sulting physician to the Emperor, and member of the Legion of Honour.
His Traits des Maladies Goutteuses, in two volumes, octavo, appeared in 1802 ; and he afterwards °cot. pied himself in preparing for the press a new edition of his Elemens de Is Science dc Homme, of which he but just lived to see the publication. His health had been declining for some years before his death ; he was subject to attacks of melancholy, which ob liged him to desist from pursuits that required in tense application, and at length induced him to change the scene altogether, and seek relief amidst the society and amusements of the capital, where he was generally honoured and esteemed. Soon after his removal to Paris, symptoms of the stone mani fested themselves, and increased so much in severity, that he was advised to submit to the operation of litho tomy, as affording the only means of arresting a linger ing and painful death. But he constantly refused to undergo the pain and risk to which it would have ne cessarily exposed him, till, after long protracted suf fering, during which he had in vain exhausted all the resources of medicine, he was suddenly relieved by a symptomatic spitting of blood ; this haemorrhage, however, was pregnant with new dangers, and, by its continual recurrence, was the immediate occasion of his death, on the 15th of October 1806, in the 72d year of his age. As we have already stated, he had published in the same year a second edition of his Nouveaux Elemens de la Science de l' Homme. He bequeathed his books and manuscripts to M. Lordat, who, in consequence, published two volumes of Con sultations de Midecine, 8vo, Paris, 1810, to which he prefixed a preface of his own. Previous to the ap pearance of this work, however, a collection of con sultations of Barthez, and of some other physicians of Paris, was given to the world by Saint-Ursin ; but it appears to have been unauthorized by those to whom he had confided his papers, and contains but few of the consultations which were afterwards pub lished by M. Lordat. Another posthumous work of Barthez, the Trate du Beau, preceded by some ac count of his life, was edited in 1807 by his brother, M. Barthez de lkarmorieres, who is known as the author of agricultural essays, and projects for im proving the maritime coast of Languedoc, together with some translations from the oriental languages ; and who has been mistaken, in a recent biographical work, for the subject of the present article.