Choiseul's dismissal threw Paris into a spin, not least because a major political crisis was already in train.

Let's put our cards on the table. We think you're the man the police are looking for—the one described in the papers.

This emphasis on the skilful feeling of the pulse made sphygmology one area of Renaissance medicine in which the much-vaunted theoretical division between physicians, who did not touch their patients, and surgeons, who routinely got their hands dirty, broke down in practice.

His chain of argumentation is flawed.