Chapter V: Preface (4)

Many a member of the medical profession who is not a genius will find an excuse for allowing disorder about his rooms from the example which is said to have been set by Jenner. He was interested in nearly every branch of science and specimens from many departments were constantly around him. He himself, it is said, had the key to the apparent confusion. Most of the others who allow themselves to drift into careless habits in the same direction insist that they too have the key. Some of their friends, however, are inclined to doubt it. It is curiously interesting under these circumstances to have Jenner's biographer tell of the confused state of affairs that existed in his room and yet his defence of it. Perhaps in this matter it is well to remember what Augustin Birrell says at the end of his essay on Carlisle:

"Don't let us quarrel with genius; we have none of it ourselves and
the worst of it is we cannot get along without it."

"The objects of his studies generally lay scattered around him; and,
as he used often to say himself, seemingly in chaotic confusion.
Fossils, and other specimens of natural history, anatomical
preparations, books, papers, letters--all presented themselves in
strange disorder; but every article bore the impress of the genius
that presided there. The fossils were marked by small pieces of
paper pasted on them, having their names and the places where they
were found inscribed in his own plain and distinct handwriting.
{108} His materials for thought and conversation were thus
constantly before him; and a visitor, on entering his apartment,
would find in abundance traces of all his private occupations. He
seemed to have no secrets of any kind; and, notwithstanding a long
experience with the world, he acted to the last as if all mankind
were as trustworthy and free from selfishness as himself. He had a
working head, being never idle, and accumulated a great store of
original observations. These treasures he imparted most generously
and liberally. Indeed his chief pleasure seemed to be in pouring out
the ample riches of his mind to everyone who enjoyed his
acquaintance. He had often reason to lament this undoubted
confidence; but such ungrateful returns neither chilled his ardor
nor ruffled his temper."

It is interesting to note what was Jenner's opinion with regard to two subjects that are very much discussed at the present time. These are the questions of religious training in education, and the advisability of making nature study a part of the course for children. Jenner considered that no education could possibly be complete which did not include both of these subjects. Religious training he deemed absolutely indispensable. Nature study he advised for somewhat different reasons from those for which it is now urged. He thought there was a depth of interest in the study of the objects of nature that could scarcely fail to lessen the burden of education for the child, but the main reason for its study to his mind was that children intent on the wonders of nature could scarcely help but realize the power of the Creator and, learning to admire Him more and more, be thus drawn to respect His laws, to acknowledge His supremacy and to devote themselves to bringing about the fulfilment of His will in this world to the fullest extent in their power.

{109}

Jenner's religious opinions and beliefs must be left to the expression of the biographer already mentioned, who gives them very fully. He says:

"One of the most remarkable features in Jenner's character, when
treating of questions of a moral or scientific nature, was a devout
expression of his consciousness of the omnipresence of the Deity. He
believed that this great truth was too much overlooked in our
systems of education; that it ought to be constantly impressed upon
the youthful heart, and that the obligations which it implied, as
well as the inward truth and purity which it required, should be
rendered more familiar to all. Mrs. Jenner was constantly occupied
in teaching these lessons to the poor around her, in schools which
she established for the purpose of affording a scriptural education.
He, building upon this foundation, wished to add instruction of a
more practical description, deduced from their daily experience, and
illustrated by a reference to those works of wisdom and beauty which
the universe supplies. He always contended that some aid of of this
kind was necessary to impress completely upon the character of the
lower ranks those maxims which they derived from their teachers. He
had other views, too, in recommending such a plan; he thought that
the lot of the poor might be ameliorated, and many sources of
amusement and information laid open to them which they are at
present deprived of; that the flowers of the field and the wonders
of the animal creation might supply them with subjects of useful
knowledge and pious meditation."

His wife, as is often, though unfortunately not always, the case, seems to have had that precious uplifting influence over him which served continually as an incentive to higher things and kept him from the sterile materialism which an exclusive absorption in scientific studies, with lack of the {110} exercise of faith and of association with human suffering, seems to bring to many men. Dr. Baron says on this point:

"I remember, when discussing with him certain questions touching the
conditions of man in this life, and dwelling upon his hopes, his
fears, his pains, and his joys, and coming to the conclusions which
merely human reason discloses to us; and when dwelling on the
deformity of the heart, our blindness, our ignorance, the evils
connected with our physical structures, our crimes, our calamities,
and our unfathomable capacity both for suffering and for
enjoyment; he observed, Mrs. Jenner can explain all these things:
they cause no difficulties to her."

Toward the end of his life Jenner's feelings with regard to the importance of a confident other worldliness as the only fitting explanation for the mysteries of this, became emphasized. To quote his biographer once more:

"As he approached nearer to his own end, his conversations with
myself were generally more or less tinged with such views as occur
to the serious mind when contemplating the handiwork of the Creator.
In all the confusion and disorder which appears in the physical
world, and in all the anomalies and errors which deface the moral,
he saw convincing demonstration that He who formed all things out of
nothing still wields and guides the machinery of his mighty creation."

Jenner's feelings with regard to the relative importance of medical and religious ministrations may be very well appreciated from an expression of his on the occasion when he was being presented to a distinguished nobleman by the famous missionary, Roland Hill. The Reverend Mr. Hill said: "Allow me to present your Lordship my friend, Dr. Jenner, who has been the means of saving more lives than any other man." "Ah," responded Jenner, "were I like {111} you I could save souls." In his sketch of Jenner's life in "The Disciples of AEsculapius," Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson considers that this incident shows a lack of appreciation of the dignity of the medical profession and a humility rather difficult to understand. Anyone who will place himself in Jenner's position of fervent belief that the one thing necessary is the salvation of souls will not fail to recognize, however, his sincerity or fail to appreciate its true significance.

After all, Jenner was so deeply impressed with the importance of other worldly things and the comparative insignificance of this that he found it even a little difficult to understand why men should not see the direct action of the Creator and all His providence in even some of the minutest details of life. Once he said, "I do not marvel that men are grateful to me, but I am surprised that they do not feel grateful to God for making me a medium of good."

Few men who have accomplished so much have felt so little vainglory over it as Jenner. There was not a jot or tittle of what is so rightly called conceit in him. He well deserves a place beside such beautiful characters as Morgagni, Auenbrugger, Laennec and Pasteur, whose work was done for others, not for themselves, and after all the most striking definition of a saint is one who thinks first of others and only second of himself.

{112}

{113}

GALVANI, FOUNDER OF ANIMAL ELECTRICITY

{114}

The world that I regard is myself; it is the Microcosm of my own
frame that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my
Globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look
upon my outside, perusing only my condition and Fortunes, do err in
my Altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders. The earth is a
point not only in respect of the Heaven above us, but of that
heavenly and celestial part within us; that mass of Flesh that
circumscribes me, limits not my mind; that surface that tells the
Heavens it hath an end, cannot persuade me I have any: I take my
circle to be above three hundred and sixty; though the number of the
Arc do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind; whilst I study
to find how I am a Microcosm, or little World, I find myself
something more than the great one. There is surely a piece of
Divinity in us, something that was before the Elements, and owes no
homage unto the Sun.
--Sir Thos. Browne, M.D.

{115}

GALVANI, FOUNDER OF ANIMAL ELECTRICITY.

It is often thought and only too often stated that the impetus to the rise of our modern science which came during the last half of the eighteenth century was due to the spirit of the French Revolution, making itself felt long before the actual declaration of the rights of man, by the French Encyclopedists. It is the custom to conclude that the spirit of liberty which was abroad infected the minds of the rising generation to such an extent that they cast off the fetters of old traditional modes of thinking, refused to accept supposed truths on the strength of tradition or on authority as before, tested knowledge for themselves, and as a consequence made true progress in the sciences. Something doubtless there is in this, and yet a careful investigation of the lives of the men to whom especially the beginnings of the biological sciences are due, will show that not only were they men with the deepest respect for authority, the greatest reverence for old modes of thinking, but also they were typical representatives of the developing influence of methods of education which are sometimes unfortunately deemed to be narrowing in the extreme.

We have already studied the life of Morgagni, the great Father of Modern Pathology, to find that he least of all, in his generation, was affected by any of the liberalizing tendencies that are supposed to have led up to the freedom of the human mind and the consequent successful broadening of human science. We shall see that there were many others who did their work at the end of the eighteenth century of whom this same thing can be said, and no more {116} striking examples of this can be found than the lives of two great Italians, Volta and Galvani, to whom the modern world has paid the tribute of acknowledging them as founders in electricity by taking their names to express important basic distinctions in the science.

It was not in Italy alone, however, that this adhesion of great scientific minds to the old orthodox teachings of Christianity constituted a notable characteristic of the history of eighteenth century science. Everywhere the same thing was true. Cavendish, Sir Humphrey Davy and Faraday, the great English scientists, to whom so much of progress in electricity and in physics is due, were very similar in this respect to their Italian colleagues. Oersted the Dane belongs in the same category. In France such distinguished names as Lamarck, the great founder of modern biology and the first to broach the theory of evolution; Hauey, the father of crystallography; Laplace, and many others might be mentioned. The lives of the men who were contemporary workers in medicine as sketched in the present volume will show this same thing to be true also in their cases.

A glance at the life of Aloysius Galvani will illustrate how little the spirit of the revolution had to do with the rise of electricity and the first discussions of its relations to life. He was born at Bologna, September 9, 1737. A number of his immediate relatives had been distinguished as clergymen. The early years of Galvani's life were spent in association with religious, and as a youth he wished to become a member of a religious order whose special function it was to assist the dying at their last hour. His father, however, was opposed to his entrance into religion, and so Galvani devoted himself to medicine at the University of Bologna, and at length became a professor of anatomy in his Alma Mater. Professor Galeazzi, who was at the time {117} one of the most distinguished professors in anatomy in Italy, was very much attracted to young Galvani and became his friend and patron in his student days. Galvani became a member of Galeazzi's household, and finally having fallen in love with one of his daughters, won her father's consent to their early marriage. The happiness in life that he thus prepared for himself became one of the often quoted exemplars of domestic felicity in Bologna, where Galvani's life was passed.

Medici, in his panegyric of Galvani, which we shall have occasion to quote from more than once, gives a very pretty story of the doctor's wooing and marriage with Lucia Galeazzi, which we prefer to repeat in the naive simplicity with which it is related by the Italian panegyrist.

Galvani had been seriously thinking of matrimony for some time and had, it seems (strange as that might be considered in a rising young scientist in our day), even prayed for counsel in the matter. One of his favorite saints was St. Francis of Sales, the Archbishop of Geneva, the gentleman saint as he has been called, for whose charming personal character Galvani had a very devout admiration. One day while praying in one of the churches of Bologna before a statue of St. Francis of Sales he looked up after some moments of abstraction to find a young woman's face between him and the altar. The face proved to be that of Lucia. Galvani looked upon it as a sign from heaven of approval of some of his wishes, and applied for the hand of the fair Lucia. Anyone who has seen the offerings at the shrine of St. Anthony of Padua, not so far from Bologna, and has realized that the good patron of things lost seems also to be a special subject of recourse in cases of lost hearts among the northern Italians even at the present day, will realize that probably the story as told is the simple truth without any tincture of romance.

{118}

Galvani began original work of a high order very early in his medical career. His graduation thesis with regard to bones, treating specially their formation and development, attracted no little attention and is especially noteworthy because of the breadth of view in it, for it touches on the various questions relative to bones from the standpoint of physics and chemistry as well as medicine and surgery. It was sufficient to obtain for its author the place of lecturer in anatomy in the University of Bologna, besides the post of director of the teaching of anatomy in the Institute of Sciences, a subsidiary institution. From the very beginning his course was popular. Galvani was an easy, interesting talker, and he was one of the first who introduced experimental demonstrations into his lectures.

At this time the science of comparative anatomy was just beginning to attract widespread attention. John Hunter in London was doing a great work in this line which has placed him in the front rank of contributors to biology and collectors of important facts in all the sciences allied to anatomy and physiology. Galvani took up this work with enthusiasm and began the study particularly of birds. These animals, the farthest removed from man of the beings that have warm blood, present by that very fact many interesting contrasts and analogies, which furnish important suggestions for the explanation of difficult problems in human anatomy and physiology.

His experimental work in comparative anatomy, strange as it might appear and apparently not to be expected, led him into the domain of electricity through the observation of certain phenomena of animal electricity and the effect of electrical current on animals.

Like so many other great discoveries in science, his first and most important observations in electrical phenomena {119} were results of an accident. Of course, it is easy to talk of accidents in these cases. The fall of the apple for Newton, Laennec's observation of the little boys tapping on a log in the courtyard of the Louvre, from which he got his idea for the invention of the stethoscope, were apparently merest accidents. Without the inventive scientific genius ready to take advantage of them, however, these accidents would not have been raised to the higher planes of important incidents in history. They would have meant nothing. The phenomena had probably occurred under men's eyes hundreds of times before, but there was no great mind ready to receive the seeds of thought it suggested and go on to follow out the conclusions so obviously indicated. Galvani's observation of the twitching of the muscles of the frog under the influence of electricity may be called one of the happy accidents of scientific development, but it was Galvani's own genius that made the accident happy.

There are two stories told as to the method of the first observation in this matter. Both of them make his wife an important factor in the discovery. According to the more popular form of the history, Galvani was engaged in preparing some frog's legs as a special dainty for his wife, who was ill and who liked this delicacy very much. He thought so much of her that he was doing this himself in the hope that she would be thus more readily tempted to eat them. While so engaged he exposed the large nerve of the animals' hind legs and at the same time split the skin covering the muscles. In doing this he touched the nerve-muscle preparation, as this has come to be called, with the scalpel and little forceps simultaneously, with the result that twitchings occurred. While seeking for the cause of these twitchings the idea of animal electricity came to him.

The other form of the story of his original discovery is not {120} less interesting and is perhaps a little more authentic. One evening he was engaged in his laboratory in making some experiments while some friends and his wife were present. By chance some frogs, the hind legs of which had been stripped of skin, were placed upon the table not far from an apparatus for the generation of frictional electricity. They were not in contact with this apparatus at any point, however, though they were not far distant from the conductor. While the apparatus was being used to produce a series of sparks, a laboratory assistant, without thinking of any possible results, touched with the point of a scalpel the sciatic nerves of one of the animals. Just as soon as he did this all the muscles of this limb went into convulsive movement. It was Galvani's wife who noticed what had happened and who had the assistant use the scalpel once more with the same result.

She was herself a woman of well-developed intellect, and her association with her father and husband made her well acquainted with the anatomy and physiology of the day. She realized that what had occurred was quite out of the ordinary. Accordingly, she called the attention of her husband to the phenomena, and is even said to have suggested their possible connection with the presence and action of the electric apparatus. Husband and wife then together, by means of a series of observations, determined that whenever the apparatus was not in use the phenomenon of the conclusive movements of the frog's legs did not take place, notwithstanding irritation by the scalpel. Whenever the electric apparatus was working, however, then the phenomenon in question always took place. According to either form of the story it is clear that Madame Galvani had an important part in the discovery, and Galvani himself, far from making little of what she had accomplished, was always {121} glad to attribute his discovery, or at least the suggestive hint that led up to it, to his wife.

After these first discoveries on the influence of artificial electricity, nothing seemed more interesting than to investigate whether ordinary atmospheric electricity as manifested in lightning would produce the same effects on muscular movements. In this matter Galvani showed much courage as an inventive genius. He dared to place an atmospheric conductor on the highest point of his house and to this conductor he attached a wire, which ran down to his laboratory. During a storm he suspended on this metallic circuit by means of their sciatic nerves frogs' legs and the legs of other animals prepared for the purpose. To the feet of the animals he attached another wire sufficiently long to reach down to the bottom of a well, thus completing a current to the ground.

All the phenomena took place exactly as if with artificial electricity. Whenever lightning flashed from the clouds the limbs of the animals experimented with underwent violent contractions, which were noticeable before the noise of the thunder, and were, so to say, the signal for it. These contractions took place, although there were no conductors from the muscles, and although the nerve conductors were not isolated. The muscular contractions were greater in proportion than the intensity of the lightning and the proximity of the storm. The phenomena were manifest whether the animal was in the open air or if, for greater convenience, it was enclosed in a room, or even in a vessel. The muscular contractions could even be noticed despite the fact that the nerves were separated somewhat from their conductor, especially whenever the lightning was violent. The sparks would leap over a small gap almost as in the case of artificial electricity, the muscular contraction of the animal {122} being proportioned to the energy and the nearness of the sparks.

It is almost needless to say, these experiments upon the frog were not accomplished in a few days or a few weeks. Galvani had his duties as Professor of Anatomy to attend to, besides the obligations imposed upon him as a busy practitioner of medicine and surgery. At that time it was not nearly so much the custom as it is at present, to use frogs for experiments, with the idea that conclusions might be obtained of value for the biological sciences generally, and especially for medicine. There has always been an undercurrent of feeling that such experiments are more or less a beating of the air. Galvani found opposition not only to his views with regard to animal electricity as enunciated after experimental demonstration, but also met with no little ridicule because of the supposed waste of time at occupations that could not be expected to lead to any practical results. It was the custom among scientific men to laugh somewhat scornfully at his patient persistence in studying out every detail of electrical action on the frog, and one of the supposedly prominent scientists of the time even dubbed him the frog dancing master. This did not, however, deter Galvani from his work, though some of the bitter things must have proved cutting enough, and might have discouraged a smaller man, less confident of the scientific value of the work that he was doing.

There were even phases of physical science quite apart from physiology or animal electricity, which he was able to illustrate by his experiments. He called special attention, for instance, to the fact that the lightning does not excite a single contraction of the muscle as is the case with a spark of artificial electricity, but that there are a series of muscular contractions succeeding one another rapidly in diminishing {123} energy and somewhat corresponding to the reiterated reports of thunder. This was Galvani's expression for the dying away of the electrical influence upon the muscle. He had thus evidently reached a hint of the pendulum-like swing with which electrical equilibrium is restored after its violent disturbance immediately following the lightning stroke. He noted, moreover, that for the production of muscular contractions the absolute appearance of lightning was not indispensable. Muscular twitchings were noted whenever the heavens were overclouded by a storm, or whenever clouds charged with electricity were passed above the conductor.

These experiments were made upon living frogs, as well as upon the separated legs, and in both cases the results obtained were very similar to those observed on the employment of some form of artificial electricity. In some of these observations, Galvani was anticipating ideas that became current truth in electrical science only many years after his time. In his observations upon the effects of lightning, he was forestalling Franklin's works to a certain extent. Both of these great scientists, however, had been anticipated by a clergyman in Austria; whose work attracted very little attention, however, because he was not in touch with the scientific bodies of the day. The demonstration of the identity of ordinary terrestrial artificial electricity and the lightning was in the air, as it were, and many workers, as is usually the case with any great discovery, came very close to it, and deserve at least a portion of the credit for it.

It is almost needless to say, many of these experiments with lightning thus conducted by Galvani were not without an element of serious personal danger. Not long after this time a Russian savant, Richman by name, while repeating Franklin's experiments with the kite, was struck dead by the charge received from his apparatus. Galvani, however, {124} devoted himself only in passing to the physical problems involved, and kept always in view the physiological aspects of the problem of animal electricity; and, accordingly, made a series of most interesting observations on the ray fish or torpedo, as it is sometimes called, the fish which gives electrical shocks. His idea was to demonstrate that the shocks felt when this animal is touched are really due to sparks of electricity similar to those which can be obtained by artificial means. This had never been determined, and Galvani succeeded in showing the presence of sparks exactly as if the animal were one of the apparatuses by which the sparks of frictional electricity are developed. At this time this seemed surprising enough. Galvani also endeavored to demonstrate that the electricity in the electric torpedo differed only in degree, but not in quality, from certain electric manifestations that he had noted in the bodies of other animals, especially the frog. His idea always was to show the existence of a natural animal electricity, by means of which some of the complex mechanism of life was accomplished. He seems to have had some notion of the theory that has been suggested often enough since, and is not yet entirely disproved, that there is some very close relationship between nerve impulses and the electric current. In this, of course, he was far ahead of his time, and utterly unable to make absolute demonstration, because of the lack of proper apparatus.

The most interesting quality of Galvani's scientific career is the thoroughly experimental character of all his researches into natural phenomena. Few men have known so well how to vary their experiments so as to bring out new details of scientific knowledge. His experimental skill was of the highest order, and it is to this that we owe the development in his hands of the nascent science of electricity to a point {125} where it became easy to continue its natural evolution. Galvani's work furnished the necessary stimulus to Volta, and then the real foundation of modern electricity was laid.

Almost more interesting than Galvani the scientist, however, is Galvani the man. As one of his biographers said of him, he joined to the most eminent intellectual genius a group of very precious qualities of the heart. Utterly unselfish in his relationship to others, he was known to be extremely sympathetic and had a large number of friends. His friends, too, he bound to him by even more than the proverbial hoops of steel, so that when they passed out of life they left him unconsolable. While it was very hard to get him to take part in social functions at which numbers of people were gathered, he was by no means a recluse, and liked to be in the company of a few friends. He seemed to care very little for the renown that his discoveries gave him, and refused, as far as possible, to be made the object of public congratulations and testimonials.

His relations with his patients--for during all of his long career he continued to practise, especially surgery and obstetrics--were of the friendliest character. While his distinction as a professor at the university gave him many opportunities for practice among the rich, he was always ready and willing to help the poor, and, indeed, seemed to feel more at home among poor patients than in the society of the wealthy and noble. Even towards the end of his life, when the loss of many friends, and especially his wife, made him retire within himself much more than before, he continued to exercise his professional skill for the benefit of the poor, though he often refused to take cases that might have proved sources of considerable gain to him. Early in life, when he was very busy between his professional work and his practice, he remarked more than once, on refusing {126} to take the cases of wealthy patients, that they had the money with which to obtain other physicians, while the poor did not, and he would prefer to keep some time for his services for them.

Toward the end of his life Galvani was not a little perturbed by the course of events around him and by the sweeping away of faith in old beliefs, consequent upon the French Revolution and the philosophic movement that had led up to it. Seeing around him, too, the abuses to which this supposed liberty and assertion of the rights of man led, it used to be a favorite expression of Galvani that "A little philosophy led men away from God, but a good deal of it led them back to Him again." Especially did he consider this true with regard to younger men, whose lack of wisdom in the difficult phases of life made them think their philosophy of things was complete, until sad experience had taught them the necessity for lifting men's minds above any mere religion of humanity, any mere stoic resignation to the inevitable, if what was best in them was to be brought out.

A very interesting phase of the Italian university life of that time is revealed in two important incidents of Galvani's university career. One of his professors, one, by the way, for whom he seems to have had a great deal of respect, and to whose lectures he devoted much attention, was Laura Caterina Maria Bassi, the distinguished woman professor of philosophy at the University of Bologna, about the middle of the eighteenth century. It is doubtless to her teaching that Galvani owes some of his thoroughgoing conservatism in philosophic speculation, a conservatism that was of great service to him later on in life, in the midst of the ultra-radical principles which became fashionable just before and during the French Revolution. Madame Bassi seems to have had her influence on him for good not only during his student {127} career, but also later in life, for she was the wife of a prominent physician in Bologna, and Galvani was often in social contact with her during his years of connection with the university.

As might, perhaps, be expected, seeing that his own happy domestic life showed him that an educated woman might be the centre of intellectual influence, Galvani seems to have had no spirit of opposition to even the highest education for women. This is very well illustrated by the first formal lecture in his course on anatomy at the university, which had for its subject the models for the teaching of anatomy that had been made by Madame Manzolini. In the early part of the eighteenth century Madame Manzolini had been the professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, and in order to make the teaching of this difficult subject easier and more definite she modelled with great care and delicate attention to every detail, so that they imitated actual dissections of the human body very closely, a set of wax figures which replaced the human body for demonstration purposes at least at the beginning of the anatomical course.

Galvani, in taking up the work of lecturer on anatomy, appreciated how much such a set of models would help in making the introduction to anatomical study easy, yet at the same time without detracting from its exactness, and, accordingly, introduced his students to Madame Manzolini's set of models in his very first lecture. At the time there were those connected with the teaching of anatomy who considered the use of these models as rather an effeminate proceeding. Galvani's lack of prejudice in the matter shows the readiness of the man to accept the best wherever he found it without regard to persons or feelings.

He was one of the most popular professors that the University of Bologna has ever had. He was not in the ordinary {128} sense of the word an orator, but he was a born teacher. The source of the enthusiasm which he aroused in his hearers was undoubtedly his own love for teaching and the power it gave him to express even intricate problems in simple, straightforward language. More than any of his predecessors he understood that experiments and demonstrations must be the real groundwork of the teaching of science. Accordingly, very few of his lectures were given without the aid of these material helps to attract attention. Besides he was known to be one who delighted to answer questions and was perfectly frank about the limitations of his knowledge whenever there was no real answer to be given to a question that had been proposed. Though an original discoverer of the first rank, he was extremely modest, particularly when talking about the details of his discoveries, or subjects relating to them.

The most striking proof of the thorough conscientiousness with which he faced the duties of life is to be found in his conduct after the establishment of the so-called Cis-Alpine Republic in Italy. This was a government established merely by force of arms without the consent of the people and a plain usurpation of the rights of the previous government. He considered himself bound in duty to the authority under which he had lived all his previous life and to which he had sworn fealty. When the University of Bologna was reorganized under the new government the first requirement of all those who were made professors was that they should take the oath of allegiance to the new government. This he refused to do. His motives can be readily understood, and though practically all the other professors of the university had taken the oath he did not consider that this freed him from his conscientious obligations in the matter.

Accordingly, he was dropped from the roll of professors {129} and deprived of the never very large salary which he had obtained from this chair. On this sum he had practically depended for his existence and he soon began to suffer from want. While he had been a successful practitioner of medicine, especially of surgery, he had always been very liberal and had spent large sums of money in demonstrations for his lectures and personal experimentation and in materials for the museums of the university. He began to suffer from actual want and friends had to come to his assistance. He refused, however, to give up his scruples in the matter and accept the professorship which was still open for him. Finally, at the end of two years, influence was brought to bear on the new government and Galvani was allowed to accept his chair in the university without taking the oath of allegiance. This tribute came too late, however, and within a short time after his restoration to his professorship he died.

That his action in this matter was very properly appreciated by his contemporaries, and that the moral influence of his example was not lost, can be realized from the expressions used by Alibert, the Secretary-general of the Medical Society of Emulation, in the historical address on Galvani which he delivered before that society in 1801:

"Galvani constantly refused to take the civil oath demanded by the
decrees of the Cis-Alpine Republic. Who can blame him for having
followed the voice of his conscience, that sacred, interior voice,
which alone prescribes the duties of man and which has preceded all
human laws? Who could not praise him for having sacrificed with such
exemplary resignation all the emoluments of his professorship rather
than violate the solemn engagements made under religious sanction?"

In the same panegyric there is a very curiously interesting passage with regard to Galvani's habit of frequently closing his {130} lectures by calling attention to the complexity yet the purposefulness of natural things and the inevitable conclusion that they must have been created with a definite purpose by a Supreme Being possessed of intelligence. At the time that Alibert wrote his memoir it was the fashion to consider, at least in France, that Christianity was a thing of the past, and that while theism might remain, that would be all that could be expected to survive the crumbling effect of the emancipation of man.

He says: "We have seen already what was Galvani's zeal and his love for the religion which he professed. We may add that in his public demonstration he never finished his lectures without exhorting his pupils to a renewal of their faith by leading them always back to the idea of the eternal Providence which develops, preserves and causes life to flow among so many different kinds of things. I write now," he continues, "in the age of reason, of tolerance and of light. Must I then defend Galvani in the eyes of posterity for one of the most beautiful sentiments that can spring from the nature of man? No, and they are but little initiated in the saner mechanism of philosophy who refused to recognize the truths established on evidence so strong and so authentic. _Breves haustus in philosophia ad atheismum ducunt, longiores autem reducunt ad deum_, small draughts of philosophy lead to atheism, but longer draughts bring one back to God"--(which may perhaps be better translated by Pope's well-known lines, "A little learning (in philosophy) is a dangerous thing; drink deep or touch not the Pierian spring").

Galvani has been honored by his fellow-citizens of Bologna as one of their greatest townsmen and by the university as one of her worthiest sons. In 1804 a medal was struck in his honor, on the reverse of which, surrounding a figure of the {131} genius of science, were the two legends: _"Mors mihi vita"_ "Death is life or me," and _"Spiritus intus alit,"_ "The spirit works within," which were favorite expressions of the great scientist while living and are lively symbols of the spirit which animated him. In 1814 a monument was erected to him in the courtyard of the University of Bologna. It is surmounted by his bust, made by the most distinguished Bolognian sculptor of the time, De Maria. On the pedestal there are two figures in bas-relief executed by the same sculptor, which represent religion and philosophy, the inspiring geniuses of Galvani's life.

Before he died, he asked, as had Dante, whose work was his favorite reading, to be buried in the humble habit of a member of the Third Order of St. Francis. He is said to have valued his fellowship with the sons of the "poor little man of Assisi" more than the many honorary fellowships of various kinds which had been conferred upon him by the scientific societies all over Europe.

{132}

{133}

LAENNEC, MARTYR TO SCIENCE

{134}

The knowledge which a man can use is the only real knowledge, the
only knowledge which has life and growth in it and converts itself
into practical power. The rest hangs like dust about the brain, or
dries like rain-drops off the stones.
--Froude.

{135}

LAENNEC, MARTYR TO SCIENCE.

On August 13, 1826, there died at Quimper in Brittany at the early age of forty-five, one of the greatest physicians of all time. His name, Rene Theodore Laennec, was destined to be forever associated with one of the most fruitful advances in medicine that has ever been made, and one which practically introduced the modern era of scientific diagnosis. At the present time the most interesting phase of medical development is concerned with the early recognition and the prevention of tuberculosis. To Laennec more than to any other is due all the data which enable the physician of the twentieth century to make the diagnosis of tuberculosis with assurance, and to treat it with more confidence than before, and so prevent its spread as far as that is possible.

The history of pulmonary consumption in its most modern phase is centred around the names of three men, Laennec, Villemin, and Koch. To Laennec will forever belong the honor of having fixed definitely the clinical picture of the disease, and of having separated it by means of auscultation and his pathological studies from all similar affections of the lungs. Villemin showed that it was an infectious disease, absolutely specific in character, and capable of transmission by inoculation from man to the animal. To Koch the world owes the knowledge of the exact cause of the disease and consequently of the practical method for preventing its spread. The isolation of the bacillus of tuberculosis is the great triumph of the end of the nineteenth century, as the separation of the disease from all others by Laennec was the triumph of the beginning of that century. There is {136} still room for a fourth name in the list, that of the man who will discover a specific remedy for the disease. It is to be hoped that his coming will not be long delayed.

The estimation in which Laennec was held by the most distinguished among his contemporaries, may be very well appreciated from the opinions expressed with regard to him and his work by the best-known Irish and English clinical observers of the period. Dr. William Stokes, who was himself, as we shall see, one of the most important contributors to our clinical knowledge of diseases of the heart and lungs in the nineteenth century, said with regard to the great French clinician whom he considered his master:

"Time has shown that the introduction of auscultation and its
subsidiary physical signs has been one of the greatest boons ever
conferred by the genius of man on the world.

"A new era in medicine has been marked by a new science, depending
on the immutable laws of physical phenomena, and, like the
discoveries founded on such a basis, simple in its application and
easily understood--a gift of science to a favored son; one by which
the ear is converted into the eye, the hidden recesses of visceral
disease open to view; a new guide to the treatment, and a new help
to the ready detection, prevention and cure of the most widely
spread diseases which affect mankind."

Dr. Addison, who is best known by the disease which since his original description has been called by his name, was no less enthusiastic in praise of Laennec's work. He said:

"Were I to affirm that Laennec contributed more toward the
advancement of the medical art than any other single individual,
either of ancient or of modern times, I should probably be advancing
a proposition which, in the estimation of many, is neither
extravagant nor unjust. His work, {137} _De l'Auscultation Mediate_,
will ever remain a monument of genius, industry, modesty and truth.
It is a work in perusing which every succeeding page only tends to
increase our admiration of the man, to captivate our attention, and
to command our confidence. We are led insensibly to the bedside of
his patients; we are startled by the originality of his system; we
can hardly persuade ourselves that any means so simple can
accomplish so much, can overcome and reduce to order the chaotic
confusion of thoracic pathology; and hesitate not in the end to
acknowledge our unqualified wonder at the triumphant confirmation of
all he professed to accomplish."

These tributes to Laennec, however, from men who were his contemporaries across the channel, have been more than equalled by distinguished physicians on both sides of the Atlantic at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. While we might hesitate to accept the opinions of those who had been so close to him at the beginning of the new era of physical diagnosis, there can be no doubt now, after the lapse of three-quarters of a century, of what Laennec's influence really was, and the tributes of the twentieth century place him among the few great geniuses to whom scientific medicine owes its most important advance.

At the annual meeting of the State Medical Society of New York held in Albany at the end of January, 1903, the president of the society, Doctor Henry L. Elsner, of Syracuse, in his annual address devoted some paragraphs to a panegyric of Laennec. He wished to call attention to what had been accomplished for scientific medicine at the beginning of the last century by a simple observant practitioner. In the course of his references to Laennec and his work he said:

"It is by no means to be considered an accident that, {138} among
the greatest advances in medicine made during the century just
closed, the introduction of pathological anatomy and auscultation
into the practice of medicine at the bedside were both effected by
the same clear mind, Laennec. He is one of the greatest physicians
of all time."

He then quoted the opinion of a distinguished English clinician, Professor T. Clifford Allbutt, who is well known, especially for his knowledge of the history of medicine. Professor Allbutt is the Regius Professor of Physic (a term about equivalent to our practice of medicine) of Cambridge University, England, and was invited to this country some years ago as the representative of English medicine to deliver the Lane lectures in San Francisco. During his stay in this country he delivered a lecture at Johns Hopkins University on "Medicine in the Nineteenth Century," in which he said, "Laennec gives me the impression of being one of the greatest physicians in history; one who deserves to stand by the side of Hippocrates and Galen, Harvey and Sydenham. Without the advances of pathology Laennec's work could not have been done; it was a revelation of the anatomy of the internal organs during the life of the patient."

Rene Theodore Hyacinthe Laennec, who is thus conceded by twentieth century medicine a place among the world's greatest medical discoverers, was born February 17, 1781, at Quimper in Bretagne, that rocky province at the north of France which has been the sturdy nursing mother of so many pure Celtic Frenchmen who have so mightily influenced the thought not only of their own country but of all the world. The names of such Bretons as Renan and Lamennais have a universal reputation and the province was even more distinguished for its scientists.

There was published [Footnote 2] a few years ago in France a detailed {139} history of Breton physicians. This work sketches the lives of the physicians of Breton birth from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Only those of the nineteenth century concern us, but the list even for this single century includes such distinguished names as Broussais, whose ideas in physiology dominated medicine for nearly the whole of the first half of the nineteenth century; Jobert, the famous French surgeon whose reputation was world-wide; Alphonse Guerin, another distinguished surgeon, whose work in the protection of wounds in some respects anticipated that of Lister; Chassaignac, to whose inventive genius surgery owes new means of preventing hemorrhage and purulent infection, and who introduced the great principle of surgical drainage; finally Maisonneuve, almost a contemporary, whose name is a household word to the surgeons of the present generation; without mentioning for the moment the subject of this sketch, Laennec, the greatest of them all. Six greater men never came from one province in the same limited space of time.

[Footnote 2: Les Medecins Bretons par Dr. Jules Roger. Paris, J. B.
Bailliere, 1900.]

Bretagne, "the land of granite covered with oaks" as the Bretons love to call it, may well be proud of its illustrious sons in the century just past. Taken altogether they form a striking example of how much the world owes to the children of the countryside who, born far from the hurrying bustle of city life, do not have their energies sapped before the proper time for their display comes. These Bretagne physicians, illustrious discoverers and ever faithful workers, are at the same time a generous tribute to the influence of the simple, honest sincerity of well-meaning parents whose religious faith was the well-spring of humble, model lives that formed a striking example for their descendants. The foundations of many a great reputation were laid in the simple village homes, far from the turmoil and the excitement of the fuller {140} life of great cities. The Bretons are but further examples of the fact that for genuine success in life the most precious preparation is residence in the country in childhood and adolescent years. The country districts of Normandy, the province lying just next to Bretagne, have furnished even more than their share of the Paris successes of the century, and have seen the Norman country boys the leaders of thought at the capital.

Laennec's father was a man of culture and intelligence, who, though a lawyer, devoted himself more to literature than his case books. His poetry is said to recall one of his better known compatriots, Deforges-Maillard. Laennec was but six years old when his mother died. His father seems to have felt himself too much preoccupied with his own work to assume the education of his son, and so the boy Laennec was placed under the guardianship of his grand-uncle, the Abbe Laennec, and lived with him for some years in the parish house at Elliant.

A relative writing of Laennec after his death says that the boy had the good fortune to be thus happily started on his path in life by a hand that was at once firm and sure. The training given him at this time was calculated to initiate him in the best possible way into those habits of application that made it possible for him to make great discoveries in after life. The boy was delicate besides, and the house of the good old rector-uncle was an excellent place for him, because of its large and airy rooms and the thoroughly hygienic condition in which it was kept. Household hygiene was not as common in those days as in our own and child mortality was higher, but the delicate boy thrived under the favorable conditions.

Besides the parish house was situated in the midst of a beautiful country. The perfectly regular and rather serious {141} life of the place was singularly well adapted to develop gradually and with due progression the precious faculties of a young, active mind and observant intelligence. This development was accomplished besides without any excitement or worry and without any of the violent contrasts or precocious disillusions of city life.

The boy passed some four or five years with his grand-uncle the priest and then went to finish his studies with a brother of his father, Dr. Laennec, a physician who has left a deservedly honored name. At this time Dr. Laennec was a member of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Nantes. The growing lad seems to have been wonderfully successful in his studies, and a number of prizes gained at school show how deeply he was interested in his work. During this time he learned English and German and became really ready to begin the study of the higher sciences. Besides working at his academic studies, Laennec paid some attention to his uncle in his professional work, and by careful observation laid the foundation of his medical studies. His character as an observer, rather than a student of books, showed itself very early. He devoted himself to the clinical investigation of cases in the military hospital and was especially interested in the study of anatomy.