he ever undertook, were in 1658,447 when Louis, still under the tutelage of Mazarin, had no sort of authority. Fermat was one of the most profound thinkers of the seventeenth century, particularly as a geometrician, in which respect he was second only to Descartes.448 The most important steps he took are those concerning the geometry of infinites, applied to the ordinates and tangents of curves; which, however, he completed in or before 1636.449 As to Gassendi and Mersenne, it is enough to say that Gassendi died in 1655,450 six years before Louis was at the head of affairs; while Mersenne died in 1648,451 when the great king was ten years old.
These were the men who flourished in France just before the system of Louis XIV. came into operation. Shortly after their death the patronage of the king began to tell upon the national intellect; and during the next fifty years no addition of importance was made to either branch of the mathematics, or, with the single exception of acoustics,452 to any of the sciences to which the mathematics are applied.453 The further the seventeenth century advanced, the more evident did the decline become, and the more clearly can we trace the connexion between the waning powers of the French, and that protective spirit which enfeebled the energies it wished to strengthen. Louis had heard that astronomy is a noble study; he was therefore anxious, by encouraging its cultivation in France, to add to the glories of his own name.454 With this view, he rewarded its professors with unexampled profusion; he built the splendid Observatory of Paris; he invited to his court the most eminent foreign astronomers, Cassini from Italy, Römer from Denmark, Huygens from Holland. But, as to native ability, France did not produce a single man who made even one of those various discoveries which mark the epochs of astronomical science. In other countries vast progress was made; and Newton in particular, by his immense generalizations, reformed nearly every branch of physics, and remodelled astronomy by carrying the laws of gravitation to the extremity of the solar system. On the other hand, France had fallen into such a torpor, that these wonderful discoveries, which changed the face of knowledge, were entirely neglected, there being no instance of any French astronomer adopting them until 1732, that is, forty-five years after they had been published by their immortal author.455 Even in matters of detail, the most valuable improvement made by French astronomers during the power of Louis XIV. was not original. They laid claim to the invention of the micrometer; an admirable resource, which, as they supposed, was first contrived by Picard and Auzout.456 The truth, however, is, that here again they were anticipated by the activity of a freer and less protected people; since the micrometer was invented by Gascoigne in or just before 1639, when the English monarch, so far from having leisure to patronize science, was about to embark in that struggle which, ten years later, cost him his crown and his life.457
The absence in France, during this period, not only of great discoveries, but also of mere practical ingenuity, is certainly very striking. In investigations requiring minute accuracy, the necessary tools, if at all complicated, were made by foreigners, the native workmen being too unskilled to construct them; and Dr. Lister, who was a very competent judge,458 and who was in Paris at the end of the seventeenth century, supplies evidence that the best mathematical instruments sold in that city were made, not by a Frenchman, but by Butterfield, an Englishman residing there.459 Nor did they succeed better in matters of immediate and obvious utility. The improvements effected in manufactures were few and insignificant, and were calculated, not for the comfort of the people, but for the luxury of the idle classes.460 What was really valuable was neglected; no great invention was made; and by the end of the reign of Louis XIV. scarcely anything had been done in machinery, or in those other contrivances which, by economising national labour, increase national wealth.461
While such was the state, not only of mathematical and astronomical science, but also of mechanical and inventive arts, corresponding symptoms of declining power were seen in other departments. In physiology, in anatomy and in medicine, we look in vain for any men equal to those by whom France had once been honoured. The greatest discovery of this kind ever made by a Frenchman, was that of the receptacle of the chyle; a discovery which, in the opinion of a high authority, is not inferior to that of the circulation of the blood by Harvey.462 This important step in our knowledge is constantly assigned to the age of Louis XIV., as if it were one of the results of his gracious bounty; but it would be difficult to tell what Louis had to do with it, since the discovery was made by Pecquet in 1647,463 when the great king was nine years old. After Pecquet, the most eminent of the French anatomists in the seventeenth century was Riolan; and his name we also find among the illustrious men who adorned the reign of Louis XIV. But the principal works of Riolan were written before Louis XIV. was born; his last work was published in 1652; and he himself died in 1657.464 Then there came a pause, and, during three generations, the French did nothing for these great subjects: they wrote no work upon them which is now read, they made no discoveries, and they seemed to have lost all heart, until that revival of knowledge, which, as we shall presently see, took place in France about the middle of the eighteenth century. In the practical parts of medicine, in its speculative parts, and in the arts connected with surgery, the same law prevails. The French, in these, as in other matters, had formerly produced men of great eminence, who had won for themselves an European reputation, and whose works are still remembered. Thus, only to mention two or three instances, they had a long line of illustrious physicians, among whom Fernel and Joubert were the earliest;465 they had, in surgery, Ambroise Paré, who not only introduced important practical improvements,466 but who has the still rarer merit of being one of the founders of comparative osteology;467 and they had Baillou, who late in the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century, advanced pathology, by connecting it with the study of morbid anatomy.468 Under Louis XIV. all this was changed. Under him, surgery was neglected, though in other countries its progress was rapid.469 The English, by the middle of the seventeenth century, had taken considerable steps in medicine: its therapeutical branch being reformed chiefly by Sydenham, its physiological branch by Glisson.470 But the age of Louis XIV. cannot boast of a single medical writer who can be compared to these; not even one whose name is now known as having made any specific addition to our knowledge. In Paris, the practice of medicine was notoriously inferior to that in the capitals of Germany, Italy, and England; while in the French provinces, the ignorance, even of the best physicians, was scandalous.471 Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that, during the whole of this long period, the French in these matters effected comparatively nothing; they made no contributions to clinical literature,472 and scarcely any to therapeutics, to pathology, to physiology, or to anatomy.473
In what are called the natural sciences, we also find the French now brought to a stand. In zoology, they had formerly possessed remarkable men, among whom Belon and Rondelet were the most conspicuous:474 but, under Louis XIV., they did not produce one original observer in this great field of inquiry.475 In chemistry, again, Rey had, in the reign of Louis XIII., struck out views of such vast importance, that he anticipated some
Montucla (
Montucla (
See extracts from two letters written by Fermat to Roberval, in 1636, in
Of which Sauveur may be considered the creator. Compare
In the report presented to Napoleon by the French Institute, it is said of the reign of Louis XIV., ‘les sciences exactes et les sciences physiques peu cultivées en France dans un siècle qui paroissoit ne trouver de charmes que dans la littérature.’
A writer late in the seventeenth century says, with some simplicity, ‘the present king of France is reputed an encourager of choice and able men, in all faculties, who can attribute to his greatness.’
The
‘L'abbé Picard fut en société avec Auzout, l'inventeur du micromètre.’
The best account I have seen of the invention of the micrometer, is in Mr. Grant's recent work,
For a short account of this able man, see
Notwithstanding the strong prejudice then existing against Englishmen, Butterfield was employed by ‘the king and all the princes.’
‘Les manufactures étaient plutôt dirigées vers le brillant que vers l'utile. On s'efforça, par un arrêt du mois de mars 1700, d'extirper, ou du moins de réduire beaucoup les fabriques de bas au métier. Malgré cette fausse direction, les objets d'un luxe très-recherché faisaient des progrès bien lents. En 1687, après la mort de Colbert, la cour soldait encore l'industrie des barbares, et faisait fabriquer et broder ses plus beaux habits à Constantinople.’
Cuvier (
‘Certainement la découverte de Pecquet ne brille pas moins dans l'histoire de notre art que la vérité démontrée pour la première fois par Harvey.’
Henle (
Some of the great steps taken by Joubert are concisely stated in
See a summary of them in
‘C'était là une vue très-ingénieuse et très-juste qu'Ambroise Paré donnait pour la première fois. C'était un commencement d'ostéologie comparée.’
‘L'un des premiers auteurs à qui l'on doit des observations cadavériques sur les maladies, est le fameux Baillou.’
‘The most celebrated surgeon of the sixteenth century was Ambroise Paré… From the time of Paré until the commencement of the eighteenth century, surgery was but little cultivated in France. Mauriceau, Saviard, and Belloste, were the only French surgeons of note who could be contrasted with so many eminent men of other nations. During the eighteenth century, France produced two surgeons of extraordinary genius; these are Petit and Desault.’
It is unnecessary to adduce evidence respecting the services rendered by Sydenham, as they are universally admitted; but what, perhaps, is less generally known, is, that Glisson anticipated those important views concerning irritability, which were afterwards developed by Haller and Gorter. Compare
Of this we have numerous complaints from foreigners who visited France. I will quote the testimony of one celebrated man. In 1699, Addison writes from Blois: ‘I made use of one of the physicians of this place, who are as cheap as our English farriers, and generally as ignorant.’
Indeed, France was the last great country in Europe in which a chair of clinical medicine was established. See
M. Bouillaud, in his account of the state of medicine in the seventeenth century, does not mention a single Frenchman during this period. See
After Belon, nothing was done in France for the natural history of animals until 1734, when there appeared the first volume of Reaumur's great work. See
