Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men Part 13

Nothing, in the marvels of somnambulism, raised more doubts than an oft-repeated a.s.sertion, relative to the power which certain persons are said to possess in a state of crisis, of deciphering a letter at a distance with the foot, the nape of the neck, or the stomach. The word _impossible_ in this instance seemed quite legitimate. Still, I do not doubt but some rigid minds would withhold it after having reflected on the ingenious experiments by which Moser produces, also at a distance, very distinct images of all sorts of objects, on all sorts of bodies, and in the most complete darkness.

When we call to mind in what immense proportion electric or magnetic actions increase by motion, we shall be less inclined to deride the rapid actions of magnetizers.

In here recording these developed reflections, I wished to show that somnambulism must not be rejected _a priori_, especially by those who have kept well up with the recent progress of the physical sciences. I have indicated some facts, some resemblances, by which magnetizers might defend themselves against those who would think it superfluous to attempt new experiments, or even to see them performed. For my part, I hesitate not to acknowledge it, although, notwithstanding the possibilities that I have pointed out, I do not admit the reality of the readings, neither through a wall, nor through any other opaque body, nor by the mere intromission of the elbow, or the occiput,--still, I should not fulfil the duties of an academician if I refused to attend the meetings where such phenomena were promised me, provided they granted me sufficient influence as regards the proofs, for me to feel a.s.sured that I was not become the victim of mere jugglery.

Nor did Franklin, Lavoisier, or Bailly believe in Mesmeric magnetism before they became members of the Government Commission, and yet we may have remarked with what minute and scrupulous care they varied the experiments. True philosophers ought to have constantly before their eyes those two beautiful lines:--

"To suppose that every thing has been discovered is a profound error: It is mistaking the horizon for the limits of the world."[12]

FOOTNOTES:

[7]

"Le voila, ce mortel, dont le siecle s'honore, Par qui sont replonges au sejour infernal Tous les fleaux vengeurs que dechaina Pandore; Dans son art bienfaisant il n'a pas de rival, Et la Grece l'eut pris pour le dieu d'Epidaure."

[8]

"Les sots sont ici-bas pour nos menus plaisirs."

[9]

"Un decrotteur a la royale, Du talon gauche estropie, Obtint pour grace speciale D'etre boiteux de l'autre pie."

[10]

"De par le Roi, defense a Dieu D'operer miracle en ce lieu!"

[11]

"Il est des noeuds secrets, il est des sympathies, Dont par les doux rapports les ames a.s.sorties S'attachent l'une a l'autre."

[12]

"Croire tout decouvert est un erreur profonde: C'est prendre l'horizon pour les bornes du monde."

ELECTION OF BAILLY INTO THE ACADEMY OF INSCRIPTIONS.

In speaking of the pretended ident.i.ty of the Atlantis, or of the kingdom of Ophir under Solomon with America, Bailly says, in his fourteenth letter to Voltaire: "Those ideas belonged to the age of learned men, but not to the philosophic age." And elsewhere (in the twenty-first letter) we read these words: "Do not fear that I shall fatigue you by heavy erudition." To have supposed that erudition could be heavy and be deficient in philosophy, was for certain people of a secondary order an unpardonable crime. And thus we saw men, excited by a sentiment of hate, arm themselves with a critical microscope, and painfully seek out imperfections in the innumerable quotations with which Bailly had strengthened himself. The harvest was not abundant; yet, these eager ferrets succeeded in discovering some weak points, some interpretations that might be contested. Their joy then knew no bounds. Bailly was treated with haughty disdain: "His literary erudition was very superficial; he had not the key of the sanctuary of antiquity; he was everywhere deficient in languages."

That it might not be supposed that these reproaches had any reference to Oriental literature, Bailly's adversaries added: "that he had not the least tincture of the ancient languages; that he did not know Latin."

He did not know Latin? And do you not see, you stupid enemies of the great Astronomer, that if it had been possible to compose such learned works as _The History of Astronomy_, and _The Letters on the Atlantis_, without referring to the original texts, by using translations only, you would no longer have preserved any importance in the literary world.

How is it that you did not remark, that by despoiling Bailly (and very arbitrarily) of the knowledge of Latin, you showed the inutility of studying that language to become both one of your best writers, and one of the most ill.u.s.trious philosophers of the age?

The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, far from partic.i.p.ating in these puerile rancours, in the blind prejudices of some lost children of erudition, called Bailly to its bosom in 1785. Till then, Fontenelle alone had had the honour of belonging to the three great Academies of France. Bailly always showed himself very proud of a distinction which a.s.sociated his name in an unusual manner with that of the ill.u.s.trious writer, whose eulogies contributed so powerfully to make science and scientific men known and respected.

Independently of this special consideration, Bailly, as member of the French Academy, could all the better appreciate the suffrages of the Academy of Inscriptions, since there existed at that time between those two ill.u.s.trious Societies a strong and inexplicable feeling of rivalry.

This had even proceeded so far, that by a most solemn deliberation of the Academy of Inscriptions, any of its members would have ceased to belong to it, would have been irrevocably expelled, if they had even only endeavoured to be received into the French Academy; and the king having annulled this deliberation, fifteen academicians bound themselves by oath to observe all its stipulations notwithstanding; furthermore, in 1783, Choiseul Gouffier, who was accused of having adhered to the principles of the fifteen confederates, and then of having allowed himself to be nominated by the rival Academy, was summoned by Anquetil to appear before the Tribunal of the Marshals of France for having broken his word of honour.

But, I may be allowed here to remark, superior men have always had the privilege of upsetting, by the mere influence of their name, the obstacles that routine, prejudices, and jealousy wished to oppose to the progress and the union of souls.

REPORT ON THE HOSPITALS.

Scientific tribunals, which should p.r.o.nounce in the first instance while awaiting the definitive judgment of the public, were one of the requisites of our epoch; and thus, without any formal prescription of its successive regulations, the Academy of Sciences has been gradually led on to appoint committees to examine all the papers that have been presented to it, and to p.r.o.nounce on their novelty, merit, and importance. This labour is generally an ungrateful one, and without glory, but talent has immense privileges; entrust Bailly with those simple Academical Reports, and their publication becomes an event.

M. Poyet, architect and comptroller of buildings in Paris, presented to Government in the course of the year 1785, a paper wherein he strove to establish the necessity of removing the Hotel Dieu, and building a new hospital in another locality. This doc.u.ment, submitted by order of the king to the judgment of the Academy, gave rise, directly or indirectly, to three deliberations. The Academic Commissioners were, La.s.sone, Tenou, Tillet, Darcet, Daubenton, Bailly, Coulomb, Laplace, and Lavoisier. It was Bailly, however, who constantly held the pen. His reports have been honoured with a great and just celebrity. The progress of science would now perhaps allow of some modification being made in the ideas of the ill.u.s.trious commissioners. Their views on warming-rooms, on their size, on ventilation, on general health, might, for example, receive some real ameliorations; but nothing could add to the sentiments of respect inspired by Bailly's work. What clearness of exposition! What neatness, what simplicity of style! Never did a writer put himself more completely out of view; never did a man more sincerely seek to make the sacred cause of humanity triumph. The interest that Bailly takes in the poor is deep, but always exempt from parade; his words are moderate, full of gentleness, even where hasty feelings of anger and indignation would have been legitimate. Of anger and of indignation! Yes, Gentlemen; listen, and decide!

I have cited the names of the commissioners. At no time, and in no country, could more virtue and learning have been united. These select men, regulating themselves in this respect according to the most common logic, felt that the task of p.r.o.nouncing on a reform of the Hotel Dieu imposed on them the necessity of examining that establishment. "We have asked," said their interpreter, "we have asked the Board of Administration to permit us to see the hospital in detail, and accompanied by some one who could guide and instruct us ... we required to know several particulars; we asked for them, but we obtained nothing."

We have obtained nothing! These are the sad, the incredible words, that men so worthy of respect are obliged to insert in the first line of their report!

What then was the authority that allowed itself to be so deficient in the most usual respect towards commissioners invested with the confidence of the King, the Academy, and the Public? This authority consisted of several administrators (the type of them, it is said, is not quite lost), who looked upon the poor as their patrimony, who devoted to them a disinterested but unproductive activity; who were impatient at any amelioration, the germ of which had not developed itself either in their own heads, or in those of certain men, philanthropic by nature, or by the privilege of their station. Ah! if by enlightened and constant care that vast asylum, opened to poverty and sickness, near Notre-Dame, had been then conducted, now sixty years ago, only in a tolerable way, we should have understood how, in taking human nature into consideration, the promoters of this great benefit would have repelled an examination that seemed to throw a doubt on their zeal and on their good sense. But alas! let us take from Bailly's work a few traits of the moderate and faithful picture that he drew of the Hotel Dieu, and you shall decide, Gentlemen, whether the susceptibility of the administrators was authorized; whether, on the contrary, they ought not themselves to have antic.i.p.ated the unhoped-for help from the king's power, united to science, which was now offered to them; whether by r.e.t.a.r.ding certain ameliorations by a single day, they did not commit the crime of lese-humanity.

In 1786, infirmities of all sorts were treated at the Hotel Dieu: surgical maladies, chronic maladies, contagious maladies, female diseases, infantine diseases, &c. Every thing was admitted, but all presented an inevitable confusion.

A patient on arriving was often laid in the bed and in the sheets of a man who had had the itch, and had just died.

The department reserved for madmen being very confined, two were put to sleep together. Two madmen in the same sheets! Nature revolts at the very thought of it.

In the ward of St. Francis, reserved exclusively for men having the smallpox, there were sometimes, for want of other s.p.a.ce, as many as six adults or eight children in a bed not a metre and a half wide.

The women attacked with this frightful disease were mixed in the ward of St. Monique with others who had only a simple fever, and the latter fell an inevitable prey to the hideous contagion, in the very place where, full of confidence, they had hoped to recover their health.

Women with child, women in their confinement, were equally crowded, pell-mell, on narrow and infected truckle-beds.

Nor let it be supposed that I have borrowed from Bailly's Report some purely exceptional cases, belonging to those cruel times, when whole populations, suffering under some epidemic, were tried beyond all human antic.i.p.ation. In their usual state, the beds of the Hotel Dieu, which were not a metre and a half wide, contained four, and often six patients; they were placed alternately head and feet, the feet of one touching the shoulders of the next; each had only for his share of s.p.a.ce 25 centimetres (9 inches); now, a man of medium size, lying with his arms close to his body, is 48 centimetres (16 inches) broad at the shoulders. The poor patients then could not keep within the bed but by lying on their side perfectly immovable; no one could turn without pushing, without waking his neighbour; they therefore used to agree, as far as their illness would allow, for some of them to remain up part of the night in the s.p.a.ce between the beds, whilst the others slept; and when the approaches of death nailed these unfortunate people to their place, did they not energetically curse that help, which in such a situation could only prolong their painful agony.

But it was not only that beds thus placed were a source of discomfort, of disgust; that they prevented rest and sleep; that an insupportable heat occasioned and propagated diseases of the skin and frightful vermin; that the fever patient bedewed his neighbours with his profuse perspirations; and that in the critical moment he might be chilled by contact with those whose hot fit would occur later, &c. Still more serious effects resulted from the presence of many sick in the same bed; the food, the medicines, intended for one person, often found their way to another. In short, Gentlemen, in those beds of multiple population, the dead often lay for hours, and sometimes whole nights, intermingled with the living. The princ.i.p.al charitable establishment in Paris thus offered those dreadful coincidences, that the poets of Rome, that ancient historians have represented under King Mezentius, as the utmost extreme of barbarism.

Such was, Gentlemen, the normal state of the old Hotel Dieu. One word, one word only, will suffice to tell what was the exceptional state: they placed some patients on the tops or testers of those same beds, where we have found so much suffering, so many authorized maledictions.

Now, Gentlemen, let us, together with our fellow academician, cast a glance on the ward of surgical operations.

This ward was full of patients. The operations were performed in their presence. Bailly says, "We see there the preparations for the torment; there are heard the cries of the tormented. He who has to suffer the next day has before him a picture of his own future sufferings; he who has pa.s.sed through this terrible trial, must be deeply moved at those cries so similar to his own, and must feel his agonies repeated; and these terrors, these emotions, he experiences in the midst of the progress of inflammation or suppuration, r.e.t.a.r.ding his recovery, and at the hazard of his life."... "To what purpose," Bailly justly exclaims, "would you make an unfortunate man suffer, if there is not a probability of saving him, and unless we increase that probability by all possible precautions?"

The heart aches, the mind becomes confused, at the sight of so much misery; and yet this hospital, so little in harmony with its intended purpose, still existed sixty years ago. It is in a capital, the centre of the arts, of knowledge, of polished manners; it is in an age renowned for the development of public wealth, for the progress of luxury, for the ruinous creation of a crowd of establishments devoted to amus.e.m.e.nts, to worldly and futile pleasures; it is by the side of the palace of an opulent archbishop; it is at the gate of a sumptuous cathedral, that the unfortunate, under the deceitful mask of charity, underwent such dreadful tortures. To whom should we impute the long duration of this vicious and inhuman organization?

To the professors of the art? No, no, Gentlemen! By an inconceivable anomaly the physicians, the surgeons, never obtained more than a secondary, a subordinate influence over the administration of the hospitals. No, no, the sentiments of the medical body for the poor could not be doubted, at an epoch and in a country where Dr. Anthony Pet.i.t thus answered the irritated queen, Marie Antoinette: "Madam, if I came not yesterday to Versailles, it was because I was attending the lying-in of a peasant, who was in the greatest danger. Your Majesty errs, however, in supposing that I neglect the Dauphin for the poor; I have hitherto treated the young child with as much attention and care as if he had been the son of one of your grooms."

Preference was granted to the most suffering, to those in most danger, disregarding rank and fortune; such was, you see, Gentlemen, the sublime rule of the French Medical Corps; and such is still its gospel. I want no other proof of it than those admirable words addressed by our fellow labourer Larrey, to his friend Tanchou, when wounded at the Battle of Montmirail: "Your wound is slight, sir; we have only room and straw in this ambulance for serious wounds. They will take you into that stable."

The medical corps could not, therefore, with any reason be accused or suspected in regard to the old Hotel Dieu of Paris.