Dr Administrator

Sentimental Savants by Meghan K. Roberts is about the role of the families of savants in the Enlightenment. In this respect it covers some of the themes of Patricia Fara’s book, Pandora’s Breeches.

The book focuses on French families, the author makes clear that this isn’t because of any special feature of French families, rather that one has to start somewhere. Each chapter covers a different facet of family life.

As usual for writing about this time I will clumsily switch between savant, natural philosopher and possibly even the anachronistic “scientist”. You know who I mean!

Prior to the Enlightenment the work of the “philosophe” was associated with monastic traditions of celibacy, or at the very least the absence of a married partner. This tradition maintained, in at least the University of Cambridge, for many years. Cambridge fellows were finally allowed to marry around 1860. During the Enlightenment in France, and elsewhere the personal life of the savant started to become important, being a good family man was seen as a benefit, it gave a savant moral authority. The evidence for these changes can be seen in the changes in style of the eulogies written for savants across the 18th century, publications including plays and learned works and through correspondence.

Women started to play a visible role in scientific and intellectual discourse during the Enlightenment. They did not have the full freedom of study that their male counterparts had. They were seen as record keepers, promoters, writers, translators, and housekeepers. It wasn’t unusual for a wife, or daughter, to be trained to the role that the man of the house had decided for her. The family was seen as part of a demonstration of savant as well-rounded person, women started to be seen as intellectuals in their own right. Émilie du Châtelet falls very clearly into this class.

In the 18th century inoculation against smallpox became a topic of public debate. Inoculation is a little different from vaccination, the patient is treated with the live virus and gets at least symptoms of the disease (a vaccine uses a dead microbe, or part of it). This makes it more risky than vaccination. In 18th century France philosophes would inoculate their children, and write publically about what they had done. This was to give moral authority to their arguments. A savant inoculating his children would be showing that he had thought about the risks and had gone ahead with the inoculation for the good of his child and of society.

The education of children is a theme of a further chapter. Rousseau makes an early entry in the book on the occasion of leaving his five children at the foundling hospital! Other savants took more care of their children. In France prior to 1762 much education was managed by the Jesuits but in 1762 they were banned from teaching. This left a gap which savants tried to fill. Although intellectual parents sought to educate both sons and daughters they approached this in a gendered fashion. Typically boys were prepared for prestigious roles in society, girls were prepared to be good wives.

The Lavoisiers make a couple of appearances in the book, first in describing the role of Marie-Anne Lavoisier in Antoine’s work and later in a chapter on Antoine’s work on his farm. Antoine was “father” to his estate, not only was he seeking to improve agricultural techniques for the benefit of France. He also wished to be seen as a paternal figure to the community, supporting it in times of need, helping to resolve disputes and tending to the sick.

The book does not present a glorious revolution whereby women came fully into the scientific community, frankly this hasn’t really happened yet – certainly in some fields – but it does show how the role of savant / academic / scientist started to move away from the lonely genius to a man embedded in family life. From the point of view of women, it represented a time where women started to become, explicitly, part of the scientific enterprise.

I notice that Roberts cites Ken Alder in her acknowledgements, his book (The Measure of All Things) on measuring the size of the Earth by triangulating a meridian through revolutionary France is well worth reading – as is Poirier’s book Lavoisier: Chemist, Biologist, Economist. As a testament to the power of blogging I see that Poirier also wrote a biography of Marie-Anne Lavoisier (La science et L’amour: Mme Lavoisier), mentioned in the comments to my post of his book on Antoine.

I found this an enjoyable read, introducing a facet to the history of science that is relatively little covered.

The Devil’s Doctor by Philip Ball is a biography of Paracelsus, and a view of Renaissance magic and science. Paracelsus, who lived from 1493 to 1541 was a contemporary of figures such as Copernicus (1473-1543) and Vesalius (1514-1564), who preceded closely William Harvey, William Gilbert,Galileo and Francis Bacon.

Each chapter says something about Paracelsus and something about the time in which he lived. So we start with his early life growing up in a small town in Switzerland, his father a physician. Before moving on to a town in what is now Austria, where his father worked as a teacher in a mining school. The aside here is on the early mining industry, in this case in the Austrian Tyrol, dominated by the entertainingly named Fugger family who had gained their pre-eminent position by lending money to the nobility with silver mines as collateral.

Mining, or rather the refining of ores into metal is a “scientific” process, mixtures of seemingly unpromisingly materials are heated and, as if by magic, a shiny and valuable metal appears. In the 16th century we would not recognise the theories by which the refining process was rationalised but they highlight the importance of understanding what was to become chemistry for profit.

What’s notable about these two chapters is that one can easily see how Paracelsus started learning early. Subsequent chapters cover Paracelsus’s own education as a physician, although it is not clear whether he ever “qualified”, and a tour of Europe chased by war.

Paracelsus was a contemporary of Martin Luther and on the face of it they and something in common in their desire to overthrow the status quo. However, Luther was very focussed on solving what he saw to be the shortcomings of the administrative side of the Catholic church. Fundamentally, he wasn’t interested in science and its reform away from the scholastic creed. Luther’s view was that God was Divine and had no need to construct a Creation amenable to scientific understanding.

Paracelsus was interested in overthrowing the status quo, particularly in medicine. To that point medicine was largely about following the teachings of the ancient Greeks whose surviving medical practice was based on the four humours. Medicine was about substances and processes to correct imbalances in the humours which arose in specific diseases. Paracelsus emphasised practical study and observation rather than cleaving to these old theoretical models for medicine. He advised seeking out folk remedies specific to places, believing that diseases and their cures were localised. So his world view was something akin to our own but not exactly so, he represents a transitional state. He also counselled only undertaking minimal surgery – exceedingly wise advice at the time.

Paracelsus’s study of “chemistry” went hand in hand with his medical work. He experimented to make medicines extracting chemicals from natural sources, combining them with other materials. At the time this type of work was usually tied up with alchemy, which was interested in turning base materials into gold and elixirs for eternal life. Alchemy was part chemistry and part mysticism and secrets. Paracelsus practicised each of these elements although it seems he was less enamoured of the secretive side. His alchemical writings were more straightforward than some of his contemporaries and predecessors. The theoretical underpinnings he provided for his work seem bizarre to us but chemistry is a difficult thing. It took hundreds of years to reach the point at which we are now and Paracelsus came early in that time.

Local man (to me) Robert of Chester gets a mention as a translator of alchemical texts. Authorship seemed a fluid concept in the early period with some people attributing their work to more renowned writers – difficult to disentangle after so many years.

For the chemists amongst us, it seems that Paracelsus discovered diethyl ether whilst trying to make sulphuric acid palatable by mixing it with wine. It is mindboggling that sulphuric acid was used as a medicine!

Many of the chapters end with Paracelsus having fled a city, typically because he had offended one authority or another. He was certainly cantankerous, it is difficult to say whether he was personally unpleasant. The way he practiced medicine was, to a degree, out of tune with the times and seemed more caring than his contemporaries. I was struck by how well documented Paracelsus’s life seemed to be, perhaps this is partly a result of his peripatetic nature.

The book finishes with a couple of chapters set after Paracelsus’s death, the first of these looks at how his writings were collected and published after his death by a band of supporters, and how a weaker band of opponents also wrote about him. This conflict probably also contributed to the relatively high level of documentation for his life. The final chapter looks at his longer term impact, this is a mixed picture. Unlike Copernicus, Vesalius, Harvey and the like he did not leave discoveries which are valid today. Rather his methodology informed the changes that were to take place in the 17th century.