I found him in a high fever, his eyes deep sunken, with a moribund and yellowish face, his tongue dry and parched, and the whole body much wasted and lean, the voice low as of a man very near death:  and I found his thigh much inflamed, suppurating, and ulcerated, discharging a greenish and very offensive sanies.  I probed it with a silver probe, wherewith I found a large cavity in the middle of the thigh, and others round the knee, sanious and cuniculate:  also several scales of bone, some loose, others not.  The leg was greatly swelled, and imbued with a pituitous humor ... and bent and drawn back.  There was a large bedsore; he could rest neither day nor night; and had no appetite to eat, but very thirsty.  I was told he often fell into a faintness of the heart, and sometimes as in epilepsy:  and often he felt sick, with such trembling he could not carry his hands to his mouth.  Seeing and considering all these great complications, and the vital powers thus broken down, truly I was very sorry I had come to him, because it seemed to me there was little hope he would escape death.  All the same, to give him courage and good hope, I told him I would soon set him on his legs, by the grace of God, and the help of his physicians and surgeons.

Having seen him, I went a walk in a garden, and prayed God He would show me this grace, that he should recover; and that He would bless our hands and our medicaments, to fight such a complication of diseases.  I discussed in my mind the means I must take to do this.  They called me to dinner.  I came into the kitchen, and there I saw, taken out of a great pot, half a sheep, a quarter of veal, three great pieces of beef, two fowls, and a very big piece of bacon, with abundance of good herbs:  then I said to myself that the broth of the pot would be full of juices, and very nourishing.

After dinner, we began our consultation, all the physicians and surgeons together, in the presence of M. le Duc d’ Ascot and some gentlemen who were with him.  I began to say to the surgeons that I was astonished they had not made incisions in M. le Marquis’ thigh, seeing that it was all suppurating, and the thick matter in it very foetid and offensive, showing it had long been pent up there; and that I had found with the probe caries of the bone, and scales of bone, which were already loose.  They answered me:  “Never would he consent to it”; indeed, it was near two months since they had been able to get leave to put clean sheets on his bed; and one scarce dared touch the coverlet, so great was his pain.  Then I said, “To heal him, we must touch something else than the coverlet of his bed.”  Each said what he thought of the malady of the patient, and in conclusion they all held it hopeless.  I told them there was still some hope, because he was young, and God and Nature sometimes do things which seem to physicians and surgeons impossible.