Martyrs of Science

by S. Henry Berthoud

  26 Adrien Thilorier (1790-1844) first produced “dry ice” (accidentally) in 1834. Berthoud knew Thilorier personally and wrote a eulogy after his death, categorizing him as a “martyr” because he was a casualty of one of his own experiments.

  27 The death of a German balloonist named Bitorff on 17 July 1812, recorded in German newspapers, was noted in the Encyclopédie Catholique, where Berthoud probably found the name.

  28 Berthoud was probably inspired to write this story by the fact that Charles Green and Spencer Rush had set a new altitude record of 7.9 kilometers in 1839, which was to remain unsurpassed until 1862. The description of Ludwig’s experiences is presumably based on those reported by Green and Rush. The previous altitude record of 7.28 kilometers had been set in 1803, which might help to explain the date cited in the story’s opening.

  29 The former reference might be the Romantic poet Félix Arvers (1806-1850); the latter remains enigmatic. Like some of the names on the list of Knebel’s acquaintances, they are probably invented.

  30 Friedrich Staps attempted to assassinate Napoléon at Schönbrunn on 13 October 1809, was intercepted and he was executed by firing-squad four days later; he was acting alone and his plan to stab the emperor with a knife was recklessly ill-conceived.

  31 Perhaps Jean-Pierre Falret (1794-1870), author of De l’aliénation mentale (1838).

  32 The Caveau was an early-19th century social club in Paris, whose members were mostly drawn from literary circles; the composer and dramatist Marc-Antoine Madeleine Désaugiers (1772-1827) was its president from 1808-15.

  33 Jean-Martin de Laubardemont (1590-1653), a state councillor appointed by Cardinal Richelieu, was the magistrate charged with the prosecution of the priest Urbain Grandier, who was charged with bewitching a county of nuns in the town of Loudun, convicted and burned. The French Romantics were fascinated by the affair; Alfred de Vigny incorporated an account of it into his novel Cinq-Mars (1826); Alexandre Dumas waxed lyrical about it in Crimes célèbres (1839-41); and Jules Michelet retold the story in La Sorcière (1862). It is now best known in England as the subject of Aldous Huxley’s lay The Devils of Loudun (1953) and Ken Russell’s film The Devils (1971).

  34 Antoine de Beauvoir du Roure, Marquis de Combalet (died 1622), only receives a footnote in French history by virtue of having married Cardinal de Richelieu’s niece, a lady-in-waiting to the queen mother, Marie de Medici.

  35 In December 1800, in the days of the Consulate, a Royalist plot was formed to blow up the First Consul Napoléon Bonaparte’s carriage with a bomb manufactured by an Italian engineer. The blast killed a number of people, but an error of timing meant that it missed its intended target. Napoléon initially refused to believe that Royalists were responsible, blaming Jacobins instead, and had 130 “suspects” summarily departed, none of whom had anything to do with the plot; the truth was subsequently uncovered by the prefect of the Parisian police and the redoubtable minister of police Joseph Fouché, but Napoléon did not allow the ex-Jacobins he had deported to return when he realized that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion.

  36 Michael-Louis-Étiene Regnaud de Saint-Jean d’Angely (1761-1819) was one of Napoléon’s most trusted aides, and was, in consequence, exiled under the Restoration. Pierre-François Réal (1757-1834) replaced Fouché as Napoléon’s minister of police; he too was exiled under the Restoration.

  37 The Danish sculptor Bertel Thorwaldsen (1779-1844).

  38 Centaurium erythraea, an herb of the gentian family.

  39 What Berthoud has in mind is a carbon arc lamp, although his description is faulty, partly because his theory of solar light-production is mistaken. The principle of the carbon arc lamp had been demonstrated by Humphry Davy in the first decade of the century, but all attempts to produce a viable version of any sustained electrical light-source had been frustrated before Berthoud wrote this story. It was not until the 1870s that the first viable carbon arc lamp—the so-called “Yablochkov candle”—was developed, and not until 1878 that Joseph Swan patented the first electric light-bulb with a carbon filament.

  40 Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851) discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields in 1820.

  41 The reference is to Antoine César Becquerel (1788-1878), the grandfather of the more famous Henri. Initially a mineralogist, his investigation of the application of electricity to chemical analysis and synthesis, following in the footsteps of Humphry Davy, allowed him to produce tiny precious stones in 1823.

  42 Moritz von Jacobi (1801-1874) invented electrotyping, or “galvanoplastic sculpture,” in 1838; the technique was rapidly adapted for relief printing, which remains its primary application.

  43 Johann Joseph Prechtel (1778-1854) made numerous contributions to electrical physics and technology in the 1820s and 1830s, but the idea of making balloons from copper sheets had first been proposed before the end of the eighteenth century and several experimental models were constructed in France in the 1840s, although none proved practicable.

  44 This might be either of two sons of the naturalist François Levaillant (1753-1824), Jean and Charles, both of whom became generals and fought in African campaigns.

  45 Scolopendra electrica, the electric centipede, enjoyed a certain celebrity in the latter part of the 19th century, when various scientists were studying it in association with the attempt to determine the chemistry by means of which luminous insects generated their light. The physicist William Crookes was one of several who kept specimens in his lab. Once the problem was solved, the species became less interesting; poets have always preferred fireflies.

  46 This quotation from Thomas à Kempis’ De Imitatione Christi (1418; tr. as On the Imitation of Christ) translates roughly as “Suffer us not to judge with the sight of our outward eyes.”

  47 This quotation is the concluding line of Jean de La Fontaine’s verse fable “Le Chameau et les Bâtons flottant” [The Camel and the Floating Sticks].

  48 The three plants for which Berthoud only gives partial details are Helianthus annuus, Helianthus tuberosus (also known as the Jerusalem artichoke) and Papaver orientale.

  49 Elias Fries (1794-1878)

  50 Konrad von Genser (1516-1565)

  51 The fungus that Linnaeus classified as Byssus phosphorea was subsequently reclassified as Thelephora caerulea. Anders Jehan Retzius (1742-1821) and Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) are the next two scientists cited, but Bartig seems to be unknown except for his contributions to the Botanische Zeitung, in which he is sometimes cited as Th. Bartig.

  52 The first three scientists cited here are Franz Meyen (1804-1840), Louis René Tulasne (1815-1885) and Carl von Martius (1794-1868); the expedition to Brazil undertaken by the last-named was in 1817-20. The Mornay cited is probably Charles-Edgar, Comte de Mornay, one of whose expeditions is commemorated by a painting of his tent made by Eugène Delacroix.

  53 Augustin-Pyramus Candolle (1778-1841).

  54 Linnaeus identified Crepidotus as a “tribe” within the genus Agaricus, but it is now considered to be a separate genus, and A. gardneri has also been shifted to the genus Lysurus.

  55 Schistostega pennata, commonly known as “goblin’s gold” is the species that Berthoud means to indicate.

  56 Samuel-Elisée Bridel-Brideri (1761-1828)

  57 “Confervoid” derives from Conferva, a type of filamentous aquatic alga.

  58 I have left this term as it is given by Berthoud, although it would not normally be applied to a person, usually being employed to designate a subcategory of koans. Most French and English writers contemporary with Berthoud would have called the individual in question a Yogi.

  59 This name is abridged; the details dramatized by Berthoud are derived from Washington L. Attlee’s pamphlet Report on a series of experiments made by the medical faculty of Lancaster on the body of Henry Cobler Moselmann, executed in the jail yard of Lancaster County, Pa., on the 20th of December, 1839. Philadelphia: T. K. & P. G. Collins, 1840.

  60 William Hyde Wollaston (176
6-1828) invented a battery in which the zinc plates could be raised out of the acid to slow down their erosion.

  61 Jean Zuléma Amussat (1796-1856) was most celebrated for his pioneering work on urogenital surgery, but Berthoud refrained fro popularizng his account of how to contrive an artificial anus in a new-born child. The work cited here is Recherches sur l’introduction accidentelle de l’air dans les veines (1839), which reports his investigations of the question of whether embolisms introduced during surgery could kill patients.

  62 André Thouin (1746-1824).

  63 The “appearance” in question is presumably the Edict of Versailles that the Marquis de Lafayette, having returned briefly to France after his distinguished service in the American War of Independence, persuaded Louis XVI to issue in 1787.

  64 Berthoud has “scolyte destructeur,” but obviously means the European elm bark beetle responsible for “Dutch elm disease,” so I have substituted the standard specific designation.

  65 The Comte de Rambuteau (1781-1869) was the Prefect of the Seine from 1833-1848, and in that capacity he began the methodical transformation of Paris that was eventually taken over and completed under the Second Empire by Baron Haussmann. His principal motivation was hygienic, inspired by the terrible cholera epidemic on 1832, which he blamed on the cramped and insanitary streets. A passionate horticulturalist, he was insistent on establishing plantations of trees alone the new avenues he constructed. He also introduced the characteristic public urinals that were long characteristic of the capital.

  66 Matassins were comical dancers dressed in silly costume and armed with wooden swords or pigs’ bladders mounted on sticks like those employed in English Morris dancers. Berthoud presumably has the latter devices in mind.

  67 Hippolyte-François Jaubert (1798-1874). The catalogue of the Bibliothèque Nationale lists numerous treatises on botany published by him in the 1850s, several relating to Paris, but it is not obvious from the titles which one Berthoud has in mind.

  68 The 7th century Irish ascetic Fiachra went to France in search of solitude and became a hermit in the province of Brie, where he cultivated his garden. He is also the patron saint of victims of venereal disease and cab drivers. (But French cabs were called fiacres because the Hôtel de Saint-Fiacre in Paris was one of the first institutions to hire out carriages, not because they contributed to the spread of venereal disease.)

  69 A mencaudee was actually an ancient measure of area rather than distance, so the use of the term here might be a mistake.

  70 This result was reported in the scientific journal Cosmos in 1858, where Berthoud, who repeats sections of it almost word for word, evidently found it, but Monsieur Barouilhet is otherwise untraceable.

  71 Berthoud’s versions of these terms are taken from primitive classification of hydrocarbons drawn up in 1836 by the French chemist Auguste Laurent (1807-1853); some have become obsolete but I have retained Anglicizations of the terms he uses rather than substituting the modern terms for the compounds in question.

  72 The reference must be to Alfred Swaine Taylor (1806-1880), the great pioneer of British forensic medicine, who was appointed Lecturer in Medical Jurisprudence at Guy’s in 1831, who campaigned against the sale of arsenic products for domestic use in the 1850s, although the case described id fictitious.

  73 Nowadays known as turpentine.

  74 Charles-Jacob Marchal de Calvi (1815-1873) held the chair of anatomy and physiology at the Val-de-Grâce hospital. The work cited is Mémoire sur l’empoisonnement par la vapeur d’essence de térébanthine (1856).

  75 François Magendie (1783-1855), an important pioneer of experimental physiology, became notorious as a vivisector, and drew sharp criticism from numerous British scientists, including Charles Darwin. His exploits lent considerable impetus to the anti-vivisectionist movement.

  76 Gustave Flourens (1794-1867) conducted expensive research into brain function by means of lesions deliberately inflicted on animal brains. His work on embryology and the work on bone formation cited here (published in Théorie expérimentale de la formation des os, 1847), is less famous, as is his work on anesthesia.

  77 The Italian scientist Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799) had conducted experiments that led him to conclude that bats navigate using the sense of hearing rather than sight, so Cuvier was simply endorsing his conclusion. It was not until the late 1930s, however, that the method of echo-location employed by bats was conclusively demonstrated by David Griffin and Robert Galambos.

  78 This reference is rather cryptic, as there does not appear to be any reference to the legendary king falling victim to such a misfortune.

  79 The psychiatrist Étienne Esquirol (1772-1840) worked for many years of the Salpêtrière, where he played a significant role in modernizing the care and treatment of mental illness. He popularized the diagnosis of “monomania”; unlike Flourens, he did not dissect brains, so Berthoud presumably means that observation metaphorically.

  80 A little over 200,000, to judge by the present one (the fourth in the sequence).

  81 These references remain untraceable, although the German town of Köthen (which Berthoud renders as Kuhthurn, apparently having borrowed the reference to the “tour des vaches” [oxen tower] from a military memoir by Guillaume de Vauldroncourt published in 1840, which refers to the town as Kuhturn) was renowned at the time for archeological discoveries of relics of Stone Age humans.

  82 I can find no evidence of this term ever being employed in geological parlance.

  83 Henri Bracconot (1780-1855) described the conversion of wood, straw and cotton into sugar by means of sulphuric acid in a paper published in 1819.

  84 The reader will recognize this passage as one reproduced virtually word-for-word from the newspaper article previously incorporated into the item in Fantaisies scientifiques de Sam here translated as “The Diabolical Coal-Merchant.”

  85 This term was indeed used by some archeologists to describe what they interpreted as items of Stone Age jewelry found in various European sites. Berthoud’s text includes a drawing of a bracelet allegedly made from “fossil sponges.” Fossil coral is a more likely material, and was still in use by some Native American tribes at the time, which encouraged analogical speculations of a dubious nature, in keeping with much the highly speculative reconstruction ventured in this story.

  86 Alexandre-Alphonse Meillet of Poitiers made numerous relics of Stone Age humans at Chaffaud and elsewhere. He also appears to have taken out several patents for inventions, but Meillet was a very common name and one has to beware of confusing his name with numerous near-namesakes.

  87 The engineer Jean-Baptiste-Apollinaire Lebas (1797-1873)

  88 Adolphe Sax (1814-1894), the inventor of the family of saxhorns and numerous other instruments, including the saxophone, was resident in Paris from 1841 onwards and was teaching at the Conservatoire when this story was written.

  89 Marie-Antoine Carême (1783-1833) was a pioneering practitioner of grande cuisine, the height of French culinary art in the 19th century. The chef Adolphe Dugléré (1805-1884) was one of his pupils; at the time this story was written he was the manager of Les Frères Provençaux at the Palais-Royal, but became head chef at the Café Anglais not long afterwards.

  90 In fact, Auguste Bertsch (1813-1870) is almost forgotten today, although he was famous when the story was written, at least in Paris, as a pioneer of photography; he invented a new collodion that made more rapid image-fixation possible, and followed it up with a mechanical shutter. Both technologies were improved so considerably after his death that his endeavors were eclipsed. Working in collaboration with Camille d’Arnaud, he made considerable strides in astronomical photography and also in photomicrography, the field in which his achievements most impressed Berthoud. He might well have achieved more had he not been a casualty of the Franco-Prussian War.

  91 The principal members of the obsolete zoological class of Entomozoaria were leeches, but it also included a number of intestinal worms to which Berthoud
makes reference here, which could indeed survive moderate cooking and were indeed dangerous to human health. His reference to germes vivant [living germs] is slightly misleading to the modern eye because he is unaware of the existence of bacteria; the infectious agents in question would be eggs or spores.

  92 Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767-1855) was a noted painter; “Madame Oberlin” was Salomé-Madeleine the wife of the Alsatian pastor Jean-Frédéric Oberlin (1740-1826), an enthusiastic advocate of social and tehnological progress whose innovations includes silhouette miniatures, whose endeavors in that line included a famous depiction of his wife and children.

  93 Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor (1805-1870), the inventor of the photomechanical printing process known as heliogravure, was one of several people in Paris attempting to solve the problem of color photography when this story was written, and evidently seemed to Berthoud to be the one most likely to succeed. He had, in fact, already made his most significant discovery, having observed in 1857 that uranium salts produced a radiation capable of fogging photographic plates, but he could not persuade anyone—including Berthoud—to take the discovery seriously, and it had to be made all over again in 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen

  94 The suggestion that the Second Empire might last a thousand years is presumably not intended any more seriously than the suggestion that the American Civil War might go one for almost as long, although Berthoud had no way of anticipating its collapse within a mere five.

  95 Victor Coste (1807-1873) published Instructions pratiques sue la pisciculture in two volumes in 1853 and 1856, and had some success in developing trout-farms and artificial oyster-beds.

  96 “Madagascar monkeys” would now be known as lemurs. The black-fronted lemur’s allegedly less appetizing relative is better known as the ring-tailed lemur—that is presumably the species to which Mademoiselle Mine belonged.