Animal Experiments, Vital Forces and Courtrooms: Mateu Orfila, François Magendie and the Study of Poisons in Nineteenth-century France
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 69; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00033790.2011.637471
ISSN1464-505X
Autores Tópico(s)Psychedelics and Drug Studies
ResumoSummary The paper follows the lives of Mateu Orfila and François Magendie in early nineteenth-century Paris, focusing on their common interest in poisons. The first part deals with the striking similarities of their early careers: their medical training, their popular private lectures, and their first publications. The next section explores their experimental work on poisons by analyzing their views on physical and vital forces in living organisms and their ideas about the significance of animal experiments in medicine. The last part describes their contrasting research on the absorption of poisons and the divergences in their approaches, methods, aims, standards of proof, and intended audiences. The analysis highlights the connections between nineteenth-century courtrooms and experimental laboratories, and shows how forensic practice not only prompted animal experimentation but also provided a substantial body of information and new research methods for dealing with major theoretical issues like the absorption of poisons. Keywords: Nineteenth-century toxicologyScientific controversiesScience and lawFrançois MagendieMateu Orfila Acknowledgements This paper is part of a larger study on nineteenth-century toxicology supported by the Spanish government (HAR2009-12918-C03-03). I am also very grateful to the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF), Philadelphia, in whose library this paper took shape thanks to two short-term fellowships (July–August 2010 and March 2011). I am indebted to Carin Bertowith, Christine Nawa, Evan Ragland and the other CHF fellows for their very insightful comments and suggestions. I would also like to express my acknowledgements to the two anonymous referees. Notes 2Victor Regnault, “Rapport sur plusieurs mémoires concernant l'emploi du procédé de Marsh, dans les recherches de médecine légale”, Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences, 12 (1841). p. 1110. 1Victor Regnault, “Rapport sur plusieurs mémoires concernant l'emploi du procédé de Marsh, dans les recherches de médecine légale”, Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences, 12 (1841), 1076–1109. 3 Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine, edited by William Bynum and Roy Porter (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), II, 919. In contrast to Magendie, there is no entry on Orfila in either the old or the new edition of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Partington's History of Chemistry only includes five brief lines on Orfila – only to say that Adolph Wurtz succeeded him at the Paris Medical Faculty. Cf. James R. Partington, A History of Chemistry (London: McMillan, 1961–70), vol. IV, p. 478. 4The introduction of laboratory science in medicine is a topic which has been widely studied by historians of medicine but they have focused mostly on the second part of the century. See William Coleman; Frederic L. Holmes (eds.), The Investigative Enterprise: Experimental Physiology in Nineteenth-Century Medicine (Berkeley and London, 1988); Andrew Cunningham; Perry Williams (eds.), The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine (Cambridge, University Press, 1992). Two outstanding exceptions to this general trend are Andreas H. Maehle, Drugs on Trial: Experimental Pharmacology and Therapeutic Innovation in the Eighteenth-Century (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1999), and John E. Lesch, Science and Medicine in France: The Emergence of Experimental Physiology, 1790–1855 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1984). 5See Carin Berkowitz, ‘Disputed discovery: vivisection and experiment in the 19th century', Endeavour, 3 (2006), 98–102, quoted on p. 99. I am grateful to Dr. Berkowitz for sending me a copy of a chapter of her recent doctoral dissertation dealing with this topic. See Carin Berkowitz, Medical Science as Pedagogy in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain: Charles Bell and the Politics of London Medical Reform (Cornell University Ph.D., 2010), pp. 14–59. For a broader discussion about priority claims and disputed discoveries, see David P. Miller, Discovering Water: James Watt, Henry Cavendish and the Nineteenth-century Water Controversy (Aldershot and Burlington, Ashgate Publishing, 2004). 6The discussion relies on other studies on experimental cultures. See the well-known books by Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (Chicago, University Press, 1997); Hans J. Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube (Stanford, University Press, 1997); Robert Kohler, Landscapes and Labscapes : Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology (Chicago, University Press, 2002). Ursula Klein, Experiments, Models, Paper Tools: Cultures of Organic Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, Stanford University Press, 2003). 7James M. Duncan Olmsted, François Magendie, Pioneer in Experimental Physiology and Scientific Medicine in XIX Century France (New York, Schumans, 1944), pp. 4–5, which unfortunately remains the most comprehensive biography of Magendie; this means that nineteenth-century biographies are still useful, particularly that written by his colleague Pierre Flourens, Éloge historique de François Magendie (Paris, Garnier Frères, 1858). A brief but insightful analysis of his work is provided by Mirko D. Grmek at the DSB, IX, pp. 6–11. Other biographies of Magendie are Lucien Deloyers, François Magendie, 1783–1855. Précurseur de la médecine expérimentale (Bruxelles : Presses Universitaires, 1970) and Francisco Gutiérrez, Magendie, fundador de la toxicología experimental (Barcelona, Richard Grandio, 1976), the latter including some interesting comparative remarks on Magendie and Orfila in pp. 56-59. Other papers and books focusing on particular aspects of Magendie's physiology will be quoted in the following notes. 8On Orfila, see José R. Bertomeu Sánchez; Agustí Nieto-Galan (eds.), Chemistry, Medicine, and Crime: Mateu J. B. Orfila (1787–1851) and His Times (Sagamore Beach, Science History Publications, 2006) which offers a review of biographical literature. His autobiography and letters have recently been published in José R. Bertomeu Sánchez; Josep M. Vidal Hernàndez (eds.), Mateu Orfila (1787–1853). Autobiografia i correspondència (Menorca, IEM, 2011). Most of Orfila's publications and other relevant documents can be read on-line at: . 9The classical study on this issue is Erwin H. Ackerknecht, Medicine at the Paris Hospital, 1794–1848 (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967). For an updated view, see Caroline Hannaway; Anne La Berge (eds.), Constructing Paris Medicine (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1998). 10Olmsted (note 7), pp. 17–18. 11François Magendie, Essai sur les usages du voile du palais, avec quelques propositions sur la fracture du cartilage des côtes (Paris, Thèse, 1808). It is worth noting that Magendie commented on Bichat's experiments on dogs (pp. 10–11). The thesis also included some propositions on surgery (fractures of the cartilage of the ribs) at the end (pp. 17–18). 12See the chapter by Antonio García Belmar in Bertomeu-Nieto (note 8), for more details. 13Mateu Orfila, Nouvelles recherches sur l'urine des ictériques (Paris, Didot jeune, 1811) 14François Magendie, Précis élémentaire de physiologie …, 2 vols. (Paris, Méquignon-Marvis, 1816–1817). 15Mateu Orfila, Elémens de chimie médicale, 2 vols. (Paris, Crochard, 1817). 16See François Magendie, “Mémoires sur le mécanisme de l'absorption chez les animaux à sang rouge et chaud”, Journal de physiologie expérimentale, 1 (1821), 1–17, pp. 1–2 (reporting public demonstrations with animal experiments on the action of drugs). And Orfila, Autobiography, in: Bertomeu-Vidal (note 8), p. 135 (on unexpected results of chemical tests on mixtures of organic substances and arsenic) On “Eureka moments”, see Frederic L. Holmes, Investigative Pathways. Patterns and Stages in the Careers of Experimental Scientists (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 171–174. 17Flourens (note 7), p. 7 : “il consacrait donc la troisième part de son temps à s'introduire dans ces salons […] il aimait, il recherchait les délicatesses de la bonne compagnie, coupables raffinements monarchiques [même s'il était républicain] qui élèvent l'esprit, forment le goût, et font vivre de la vie de l'intelligence”. 18Pierre H. M. Bérard, Éloge d'Orfila prononcé dans la séance de rentrée de la Faculté de médecine (Paris, Labé, 1854), p. 50: “J'ai obtenu plus de décisions avantageuses pour la Faculté, j'ai mené à bonne fin plus d'entreprises relatives aux études, dans les salons que dans les bureaux des administrations”. See also Amédée Fayol, La vie et l’œuvre d'Orfila (Paris, Albin Michel, 1930), pp. 130–43. During the 1830s and 1840s, Orfila held a popular salon frequented by musicians, physicians and Orleanist politicians. 19“Mon ami le docteur Magendie”. Cf. Mateu Orfila, Traité des poisons (Paris, Crochard, 1814–1815), vol. II, p. 308, in which he offers a summary of Magendie's experiments on “Upas-tieuté”. 20Orfila refers to Magendie frequently in his books and papers, but Magendie hardly mentions Orfila's research in his works. However, in a paper on “physiological and medical researches into the causes, symptoms, and treatment of gravel” (a disease of the urinary tract), Magendie mentions some information from the island of Majorca “provided by Orfila”. Cf. François Magendie, Recherches physiologiques et médicales sur les causes, les symptômes et le traitement de la gravelle (Paris, 1818), p. 31. 21They published very different kinds of journals. Magendie edited the Journal de physiologie expérimentale et pathologique (1821) (which mostly included his own research) and Orfila was a member of the editorial committee of two influential journals on medical chemistry (Journal de chimie médicale) and legal medicine and hygiene (Annales d'higiène publique et de médecine légale). 22On this trial, see the paper by Sacha Tomic, “Alkaloids and Crime in Early Nineteenth-Century France”, in Bertomeu Sánchez & Nieto Galán, note (8), pp. 261–293. 23Charles P. Ollivier d'Angers, “Considérations médico-légales sur les morts subites …”, Archives générales de médecine, 1 (1838), 29–57, pp. 51–57. The other case in which Orfila and Magendie were called as expert witness is described in Mateu Orfila, “Mémoire sur l'acide hydrocyanique”, Annales d'hygiène publique et de médecine légale, 1 (1829), 487–531 (1829). Magendie and Orfila were members of a commission for the reform of medical studies in 1838. See Jacques Leonard, Les médecins de l'ouest au XIXème siècle (Paris, Thèse Paris IV, 1978), vol. I, pp. 782–783. 24Olmsted, note (7), pp. 160–177. On the political atmosphere and the contrasting opportunities of the Royalist Laennec and Magendie, see Jacalyn Duffin, To See with a Better Eye. A Life of R.T.H. Laennec, (Princeton, University Press, 1998), pp. 275–276. See also John E. Lesch, The Origins of Experimental Physiology and Pharmacology in France, 1790–1820: Bichat and Magendie (Princenton, Princeton University, Ph.D., 1977), pp. 211–222. 25Cf. Procès-verbaux des séances de l'Académie (Paris, 1910–1922), vol. VI (1820–1823), pp. 246–247. Cf. Session 12 and 19 November 1821. 26In the session of 29 April 1822, Orfila was on the list of candidates but, in the session of 6 May, Chaussier was finally elected. Cf. Annales de Chimie, 20 (1822), p. 80. 27See Archives of the Académie des Sciences, Paris, “Dossier Orfila”. Orfila wrote letters to the President of the Academy of Sciences supporting his candidature to replace Portal (1832), Cassini (1832) and Desgenettes (1837). 28For more details, see Maurice Crosland, Science Under Control: the French Academy of Sciences, 1795–1914 (Cambridge, University Press, 1992), pp. 232–233. As other members, Magendie wrote critical reports on memoirs submitted to the Academy of Sciences, sometimes collaborating with outstanding chemists as Gay-Lussac. See Sacha Tomic, Aux origines de la chimie organique. Méthodes et pratiques des pharmaciens et des chimistes (1785–1835) (Rennes, PUR, 2010), p. 172. 29Michel Foucault, La naissance de la clinique: Une archéologie du regard médical (Paris, PUF, 1963). 30Ackerknecht (note 9), passim. 31As in many other studies, the few lines on Orfila included in Ackerknecht's book focus only on his role as administrator of the Paris Medical Faculty. Ackerknecht (note 9), pp. 41–42 and 180. This contrasts with the image conveyed in Erwin H. Ackerknecht, “Early history of legal medicine”, in Legacies in Law and Medicine, edited by Chester R. Burns (New York, Science History Publications, 1977), pp. 249–271. In this latter paper, Ackerknecht considered Orfila to be a highly influential author in “the development of scientific legal medicine” for his contribution to the introduction of “the new experimental methods and the new chemistry into one of the most important branches of legal medicine” (quoted on p. 261). 32Hannaway and La Berge, note (9), pp. 1–71. 33Toby Gelfand, Professionalizing Modern Medicine. Paris Surgeons and Medical Science and Institutions in the 18th Century (Westport, Greenwood Press, 1980); Othmar Keel, L'avènement de la médecine clinique moderne en Europe, 1750–1815. Politiques, institutions et savoirs (Montréal, Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 2001). 34Ann La Berge, “Medical Microscopy in Paris, 1830–1855”, in French medical culture in the nineteenth century, edited by Ann La Berge and Mordechei Feingold (Amsterdam-Atlanta, Rodopi, 1994), 296–327; Ann La Berge, “Dichotomy or Integration? Medical Microscopy and the Paris Clinical Tradition”, in Caroline Hannaway and Ann La Berge, note (9), pp. 275–313. 35John E. Lesch, “The Paris Academy of Medicine and Experimental Science, 1820–1848”, in The Investigative Enterprise. Experimental Physiology in Nineteenth-Century Medicine , edited by William Coleman and Frederic L. Holmes (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1988), 100–139, p. 101. See Lesch (note 24), and his book quoted in note (4). See also John E. Lesch, “Conceptual Change in an Empirical Science: The Discovery of the first Alkaloids”, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 11 (2) (1981), 305–328. 36There are just a few lines on Orfila in Lesch, note (4), p. 160. 37Quotation “science made for courts” taken from Sheila Jasanoff, Science at the Bar: Law, Science, and Technology in America (Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1995), pp. 50–51. The issue cannot be pursued in more depth this paper. For a recent overview, see Martin Carrier; Alfred Nordmann (eds.), Science in the Context of Application (Dordrecht, Springer, 2010). 38On methodological problems in science and medicine in nineteenth-century see John H. Warner, ‘Science in Medicine', Osiris, 1 (1985), 37-58, and the recent review by Michael Worboys, ‘Practice and the Science of Medicine in the Nineteenth-Century', Isis, 2011, 102 (1): 109–115. 39Apart from the work by Lesch mentioned in notes 4 and 35, another important study of Magendie is William R. Albury, “Experiment and Explanation in the Physiology of Bichat and Magendie”, Studies in History of Biology, 1 (1977), 47–131, which defended a different view concerning Bichat's and Magendie's ideas on physiology. For other non-experimental conceptions of physiology in early nineteenth-century France, see Leon S. Lacyna, “Medical Science and Moral Science: the Cultural Relations of Physiology in Restoration France”, History of Science, 25 (1997), 111–146. On the changing meanings of anatomy and physiology, see Andrew Cunningham, “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and Anatomy before 1800”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2002, 33 (4), 631–665; 34 (1), 51–76. 40On French vitalism see Roselyn Rey, Naissance et développement du vitalisme en France de la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle à la fin du Premier Empire (Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 2000), and Elisabeth A. Williams, A Cultural History of Medical Vitalism in Englightenment Montpellier (Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003). For a broader overview, see Guido Cimino, François Duchesneau (eds.), Vitalisms from Haller to the Cell Theory (Firenze, Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1997), which includes a very interesting paper on vitalism and Claude Bernard by Frederic L. Holmes, pp. 281–295. And the special issue of Science in Context, 21 (4) (2008), 461-664, which is focussed on Eighteenth-century vitalism. 41The most famous is his paper “Quelques idées générales sur les phénomènes particuliers aux corps vivans” Bulletin des sciences médicales, 4 (1809), 145–170. For a discussion of Magendie's early research see Lesch, note (24), 215–222, 225–226; Albury, note (39) and Frank W. Stahnisch, Ideas in Action: Der Funktionsbegriff und seine methodologische Rolle im Forschungsprogramm des Experimentalphysiologen François Magendie (1783–1855) (Berlin, Ph.D., 2001), pp. 123–185. 42F. M.[agendie], “An essay on chymical history and medical treatment of calculous disorders, etc.; … par A. Marcet … ”, Nouveau journal de médecine, 1 (1818), 260–270; 363–37; on pp. 260–61. On Magendie's ideas about this question, see Olmsted, note (7), 27–34, and Deloyers, note (7), pp. 98–119. See also François Magendie, Précis élémentaire de physiologie par … (Paris, Méquignon-Marvis, 1816–1817), vol. I, p. 21–22. And the second edition, Paris, 1825, pp. 21–23. For a more detailed discussion of Magendie's and Bichat's ideas on these topics see the contrasting views of Lesch, note (24) and Albury, note (39). See also Stahnisch note (41), notably pp. 96–104, for the influence of Cuvier's anatomy on Magendie. 43Mateu Orfila, “Chimie”, in: Nicolas-Philibert Adelon et al. (eds.) Dictionnaire de Médecine (Paris, Béchez Jeune, 1821–1828), vol. V (1822), 127–133. This last sentence was also in the second edition, Paris, 1832–1846, vol. VII, p. 310. On Orfila's ideas on vital forces see José R. Bertomeu Sánchez and Antonio Garcia Belmar, “Mateu Orfila's Elemens de chimie medicale and the Debate about the Medical Applications of Chemistry in Early Nineteenth Century France”, Ambix, 47 (2000), 1–25. 44The term ‘vital materialism’ was employed by Owsei Temkin “Materialism in French and German Physiology in the Early Nineteenth Century”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 20 (1946), 323–327. See also Timothy Lenoir, The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology (Dordrecht, Reidel, 1982), especially chapter I. See also the studies on Jacob Berzelius by Alan Rocke, “Berzelius's Animal Chemistry: From Physiology to Organic Chemistry (1805–1814)”, in Enlightenment Science in the Romantic Era, edited by Evan M. Melhado; Tore Frängsmyr (Cambridge, University Press, 1992), pp. 107–131; and on Claude Bernard by Frederic L. Holmes, “Claude Bernard and the Vitalism of his Time”, in Cimino and Duchesneau, note (40), 281–295. 45Orfila (note 19), II, 153–154. See also Mateu Orfila, Elemens de chimie (Paris, Crochard, 1817), vol. I, p. ii. Similar animal experiments made by injecting alkaline substances into veins had been performed since the seventeenth century, sometimes producing contrasting results to those obtained by Orfila. I am indebted to Evan Ragland for this information. 46On “vitalism” as an “epistemological obstacle” see Gaston Bachelard, La formation de l'esprit scientifique (Paris, Vrin, 1993) (1st edition, 1938) and the critical remarks by his disciple George Canghilhem, La connaissance de la vie (Paris, Vrin, 1992), pp. 105–127. 47Lesch, note (24), 257. 48On this issue, see Bertomeu-Sánchez & Nieto-Galan, note (8), and Ian Burney, Poison, Detection, and the Victorian Imagination (Manchester, University Press, 2006). 49Mateu Orfila, “Empoisonnement par les sels de plomb”, Bulletin de l'Académie Royale de Médecine, 3 (1838), 161–177, quoted on p. 161. 50On animal experimentation and medicine before the nineteenth century, see Melvin P. Earles, “Experiments with Drugs and Poisons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”, Annals of Science, 19 (1963): 241–254. Many other examples are offered in the detailed study on eighteenth-century experimental pharmacology by Maehle (note 4). See also Hubert Steinke, Irritating Experiments. Haller's Concept and the European Controversy on Irritability and Sensibility, 1750–90, (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2005); particularly chapter IV. For a broader picture, see Anita Guerrini, Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Galen to Animal Rights (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2003). 51Claude Bernard, François Magendie. Leçons d'ouverture du cours de médecine du Collège de France … (Paris, Baillière, 1856), p. 14. He also mentioned an episode in which Magendie confronted a Quaker and tried to explain to him why animal experimentation was needed for the advancement of physiology. Cf. Ibid. pp. 14–17. 52Two different accounts of Orfila's lectures were published between October and November 1840 in Le Moniteur and in L'Esculape, 29 October 1840 to 5 November 1840. The lectures were even described in The Times in London. See Anne Crowther, “The Toxicology of Robert Christison: European Influences and British Practice in the Early Nineteenth Century”, in Bertomeu-Sánchez and Nieto-Galán, note (8). 53The student was James Macaulay. Quoted by Berkowitz, note (5), p. 98. See Roger French, Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society (Princeton, University Press, 1975) and Guerrini (note 50), pp. 71–87. For a contemporary account on this issue, see Frédéric Dubois, “Eloge de M. Magendie”, Mémoires de l'Académie impériale de médecine de Paris, 22 (1858), 1–36, pp. 23–25. 54See Anne Crowther, note (52). 55 British and Foreign Medico Chirurgical Review, 27 (April 1861), 285–318, quoted on p. 308. 60Orfila's emphasis. Cf. Mateu Orfila, Secours à donner aux personnes empoisonnées et asphyxiées, 2nd ed. (Paris, Béchet, 1821), pp. 9–10. More details in José R. Bertomeu Sánchez, “Popularizing Controversial Science: A Popular Treatise on Poisons by Mateu Orfila (1818)”, Medical History, 53 (2009), 351–379. The translation is mine. 56See Paul Elliot, “Vivisection and the Emergence of Experimental Physiology in Nineteenth-century France”, in Vivisection in historical perspective, edited by Nicholas Rupke (New York, Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 48–77. 57François Magendie, Formulaire pour la préparation et l'emploi de plusieurs nouveaux médicamens… (Paris, Méquignon-Marvis, 1821), p. vi. “Rien n'est plus faux cependant que cette croyance: dix ans d'expériences de tous genres, soit dans mon laboratoire, soit au lit du malade, me permettent d'affirmer que la manière d'agir des médicamens et des poisons, est la même sur l'homme et sur les animaux”. Translation taken from F. Magendie, Formulary for the Preparation and Employment of Several New Remedies (London, Underwood, 1828), p. x. 58Mateu Orfila, “Note sur l'empoisonnement par l'oxyde blanc d'arsenic …”, Archives générales de médecine, 1 (1823), 147–152; pp. 147–148. “funeste à l'avancement de la science”. 59Antoine Portal, ‘Quelques considérations sur les antidotes, ou remèdes spécifiques contre les poisons lues au cercle médical, mois de juillet 1818’, in idem , Mémoires sur la nature et le traitement de plusieurs maladies (Paris, Bertrand, 1800–1825), vol. 4, pp. 300–16. 61See, for instance, the critical remarks of the editor of the Gazette Médicale de Paris, 1 (24), June 1830, p. 225, in a short biographical account of Magendie. “Vous voulez voir de vos yeux comment se passent tels ou tels phénomènes dans l'état naturel, mais pour jouir de ce spectacle vous êtes obligé d'établir préalablement dans l'économie un état contre nature, un état pathologique. Pour voir l'ordre, il vous faut introduire d'abord le désordre. Quelle confiance ajouter par conséquent à vos conclusions?” 62On this issue, see Berkowitz, note (5), which notes the epistemological differences between Bell and Magendie as well as the nationalistic overtones of the dispute concerning vivisection in early nineteenth-century Britain. 63George Macilwain, Memoirs of John Abernethy, F.R.S. … (London, Hurst and Blackett, 1853), pp. 194–200, quoted on p. 200. He also referred to the work of Charles Bell on pp. 200-201. See Diana Manuel, “Marshall Hall (1790–1857): Vivisection and the Development of Experimental Physiology”, in Vivisection in historical perspective, edited by Nicholas Rupke (New York, Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 78–105, on p. 96. 64Some nineteenth-century authors commented on this point. See Arnold Berthold; Robert Bunsen, Eisenoxydhydrat, das Gegengift des weissen Arseniks oder der arsenigen Säure (Göttingen, Dieterischen Buchhandlung, 1837), 2nd ed., pp. 27–29. Their animal experiments were described in a letter by Bunsen (May 1834), reprinted in Christine Stock, Robert Wilhelm Bunsens Korrespondenz vor dem Antritt der Heidelberger Professur (1852). Kritische Edition (Stuttgart, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2007), pp. 126–127. I am very grateful to Christine Nawa for kindly offering me information about this book. 65François Magendie, De l'influence de l'émétique sur les hommes et les animaux… (Paris, Crochard, 1813). 66Orfila, Traité des poisons, note (19), vol. II, pp. 228–235. 67The discussion was moved to the introduction of the first volume in the second edition. Cf. Mateu Orfila, Traité de toxicologie (Paris, Crochard, 1818), 2nd ed., vol. I, pp. 33–40. Orfila reviewed and answered the criticisms in the subsequent editions of his textbook. See Traité de Toxicologie (Paris, Labé, 1851), 5th ed., vol. I, pp. 45–51. 70 Gazette des Hôpitaux, 12 (102) (29 August 1839), pp. 405–406 : “rejetez surtout la ligature de l'oesophage, qui est bien loin d'être indifférente. C'est à ce moyen, employé dans beaucoup d'expériences faites en France, que j'attribue les fausses idées qu'on s'est formées sur l'action des poisons et des remèdes. On leur a attribué la vertu d'enflammer l'estomac et le poumon sans réfléchir que ces inflammations étaient le résultat des opérations chirurgicales qu'on avait pratiquées”. 68Giacomandrea Giacomini, Traité philosophique et expérimental de matière médicale et de thérapeutique par … (Paris, Bureau de l'Encyclopédie, 1839), p. 259. Giocomini refers to F. Magendie (note 65). His criticism was based on his distinction between the “mechanical” and “dynamic” effects of drugs. See G. Federpil; C. Martini, ‘Giacomo Andrea Giacomini: a Padua clinician between metaphysics and science', History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 13 (1991), 73–95. 69See José R. Bertomeu, “Sense and sensitivity: Mateu Orfila, the Marsh Test and the Lafarge Affair”, in Bertomeu-Sanchez & Nieto-Galán, note (8), pp. 207–242. 71See Antoine Trousseau, ‘Rapport Académique sur la ligature de l'œsophage et ses effets consécutifs’, Revue médicale francaise et étrangère, 2 (1858), 135–151; 201–216. 72Louis Orfila, De la ligature de l'oesophage (Paris, Henri Plon, 1858). 73Ambroise Tardieu, Étude médico-légale et clinique sur l'empoisonnement par … (Paris, Baillière, 1867), pp. 10–11 : The ligature of œsophagus “mettant obstacle à l'expulsion plus ou moins complète du poison, modifie d'une manière tout artificielle les conditions de l'empoisonnement et ne permet plus de l'assimiler avec celui que la médecine légale a mission de constater”. Tardieu claimed that relying on animal experiments (and not on clinical observations) in toxicology was “un vice radical”. See also p. 112. 74Orfila, Traité des poisons, (note 19), vol. I, pp. 138–141. He quoted Benjamin C. Brodie “Further Experiments and Observations on the Action of Poisons on the Animal System”, Philosophical Transactions, 102 (1812), 205–227. In the second edition of his book, the section was substantially enlarged with new publications supporting this view and his own experiments on dogs. Cf. Mateu Orfila, Traité de toxicologie, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1818), vol. I, pp. 165–177. Orfila's experiments are reported in pp. 176–177. Similar information was reported in the third edition (Paris, 1826, vol. I, pp. 367–380) but the section was completely renewed in the fourth edition and now included the new experiments performed by Orfila during 1839 and 1840. Cf. Mateu Orfila, Traité de toxicologie, 4th ed. (Paris, 1843), vol. I, pp. 306–310. 75Orfila, Traité des poisons (note 19), vol. I, pp. 209–210. 76Cf. Magendie (note 65), p. 41. The issue was discussed in the second part of the book, pp. 34–41. For more details and the general context of these experiments, see Stahnisch, note (41), pp. 142–146. 77François Magendie, Mémoire sur les organes de l'absorption chez les mamifères… (Paris, 1809). He expressed his conclusions cautiously : “Seulement, on doit remarquer que nos expériences prouvent singulièrement en faveur d'une absorption directe par les veines” (Cf. Ibid. pp. 11–12). See Lesch, note (24), pp. 252–260 and Stahnisch, note (41), pp. 123–142; Early ideas on absorption were reviewed by Magendie in pp. 3–5. See also Melvin P. Earles, “Early theories of mode of action of drugs and poisons”, Annals of Science, 17 (1961), 97–110. 78François Magendie, “Mémoire sur le mécanisme de l'absorption chez les animaux à sang rouge et chaud”, Journal de physiologie expérimentale, 1, 1–17 (1821), quoted on p. 8. See Lesch, note (24), pp. 260–269 and Stahnisch, note (41), pp. 163–172. 79The quotation is taken from a very famous sentence by Claude Bernard “Ces substances [poisons] ainsi considérées sont de véritables réactifs de la vie qui, portés par le torrent de la circulation dans tous les points de l'organisme, exercent leur action sur certains tissus, les isolent et amènent la mort par un mécanisme qui désigne le rôle physiologique du tissu qui se trouve atteint”. Cf. Claude Bernard, Leçons sur les effets des substa
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