Blood Work (27 page)
Authors: Holly Tucker
21
“Cure of an Inveterate Phrensy by the Transfusion of Bloud,” 618.
22
Twigg,
Bathing
, 25â28.
CHAPTER 13: MONSTERS AND MARVELS
1
All references to Martinière's adventures as a surgeon, pirate, and slave are from his autobiography,
Heureux esclave.
2
Martinière,
Heureux esclave
, 13.
3
Dannenfeldt, “Egyptian Mumia,” 173.
4
Martinière,
Heureux esclave
, 119.
5
Ibid., 204.
6
Martinière,
Les sentiments d'un vray médicin
, 5.
7
Ibid., 4.
8
Ibid., 5.
9
Martinière,
L'Ombre d'Apollon
, 3. The account is dated September 15, 1667.
10
Ibid., 3â4.
11
“A Letter Concerning a New Way of Curing Sundry Diseases by Transfusion of Bloud, Written to Monsieur de Montmor” “Lettre de G. Lamy à M. Moreau Docteur en Médecine de la Faculté de Paris contre les pretendues utilitez de la Transfusion” “Lettre de G. Gadroys à M. l'Abbé Bourdelot Docteur de Médecine de la Faculté de Paris, pour servir de Réponse à la lettre écrite par M. Lamy contre la Transfusion.”
12
Lamy, “Lettre écrite à Moreau.”
13
Ibid.
14
Lamy,
Discours anatomiques
, cited in Kors, “Monsters and the Problem of Naturalism,” 36.
15
Lamy,
Discours anatomiques
, 22â23.
16
See Debus,
French Paracelsans
, 84â95.
17
Brygoo, “Les médecins de Montpellier,” 7. See also Jones, “Medicalisation.”
18
Martinière,
L'Ombre d'Apollon
, 16.
CHAPTER 14: THE WIDOW
1
Hussey,
Paris: The Secret History
, 165â166.
2
“An Extract of a Printed Letter, Addressed to the Publisher, by M. Jean
Denisâ¦. Touching the Differences Risen About the Transfusion of Bloud,”
Philosophical Transactions
, 1668, vol. 3: 710â715. Descriptions of the circumstances of Mauroy's death have been distilled from this and other contemporary reports, including extant court records.
3
Peuméry,
Jean-Baptiste Denis
, 127â137.
4
“An Extract of a Printed Letter, Addressed to the Publisher, by M. Jean Denisâ¦. Touching the Differences Risen About the Transfusion of Bloud,”
Philosophical Transactions
, 1668, vol. 3: 711.
5
Ibid.
6
Justel to Oldenburg, 15 February 1668.
7
Justel to Oldenburg, 25 February 1668.
8
Justel to Oldenburg, 21 February 1668.
CHAPTER 15: THE AFFAIR OF THE POISONS
1
Denis, “Extract of a Letter Touching a Late Cure.” An “Extrait des registres du greffe criminal du Chastelet de Paris, du mardy 17 avril 1668” was included in Denis' letter and published in
Philosophical Transactions
3 (1668), 710â715, and reprinted as well in Martinière,
Remonstrances Charitables.
While the original decree is no longer extant, the “extraits” published by Denis and Martinière and elsewhere are identical and reasonably reliable, particularly given that there is no debate between the two men about the faithfulness of the document in regard to the official proceedings at the Grand Châtelet.
2
“An Extract of a Printed Letter, Addressed to the Publisher, by M. Jean Denisâ¦. Touching the Differences Risen About the Transfusion of Bloud,”
Philosophical Transactions
, 1668, vol. 3: 711.
3
The corpses were laid out, usually uncovered, in one of the Châtelet's many open courtyards until they could be collected, washed, and transferred (by the nuns of nearby Saint-Opportune hospital) to the pit graves in the cemetery that was steps away from the Grand Châtelet. Chardans,
Le Châtelet
, 36. See also Andrews,
Law, Magistracy
, 14.
4
Chardans,
Le Châtelet
, 42.
5
Saint-Germain,
La Reynie
, 36.
6
Twice a week the
Lieutenant Criminel
(criminal lieutenant) presided over the presentation of the facts in minor criminal cases, which were punishable by the payment of damages and court costs. Mousnier,
Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy
, 319.
7
“Extrait des registres du greffe criminal du Chastelet de Paris, du mardy 17 avril 1668.” See also Denis, “Extract of a Letter Touching a Late Cure.”
8
“Extrait des registres du greffe criminal du Chastelet de Paris, du mardy 17 avril 1668.”
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
11
Cited in Bluche,
Louis XIV
, 268.
12
Mollenauer,
Strange Revelations
, 72.
13
“Extrait des registres du greffe criminal du Chastelet de Paris, du mardy 17 avril 1668.”
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid.
16
Denis to Oldenburg, May 5, 1668.
17
See Hamscher,
The Parlement of Paris
, 98â107; Hamscher,
Conseil Privé
, esp. chap. 2; and Andrews,
Law, Magistracy
, chap. 2, for these and other details regarding court structure and protocol at parliament.
18
Confirmed by Lamy, “Lettre escrite a Monsieur Moreau,” February 16, 1668, 1.
19
The attendees are confirmed in “A Letter Written by an Intelligent and Worthy Englishman from Paris,”
Philosophical Transactions
, December 13, 1669, 1075. They are consistent with the traditional composition of the Grand'Chambre. See Andrews,
Law, Magistracy
, 88.
20
The last
lit de justice
was held on February 24, 1673. It deprived the parliament of Paris of the right to question royal edicts before officially registering them.
21
“A Letter Written by an Intelligent and Worthy Englishman from Paris,” 1075. My colleague Albert Hamscher, an internationally known specialist on the seventeenth-century parliament, confirmed that
records not only for this parliamentary case but thousands of others during the same time period were destroyed or lost at some point over the hundred years or so that followed.
CHAPTER 16: CHIMERAS
1
Oldenburg confirmed this to Denis in a letter, now lost, dated 29 April 1668.
2
Lower,
De corde.
Cited in Franke,
Oxford Physiologists
, 214.
3
Martinière,
Sur l'Ombre de Phaeton
, 4.
4
Lamy, “Lettre escrite à Monsieur Moreau,” 16 February 1668, 7â8.
5
Ibid., 10.
6
Ibid., 11.
7
Martinière,
Sur l'Ombre de Phaeton,
Preface, 1.
8
See Thomson, “Guillaume Lamy et l'âme materielle,” 64â70.
9
Martinière,
Sur l'Ombre de Phaeton
, 2â3.
10
Ibid., 3.
11
Martinière,
Chymique ingénue
, 74.
12
Martinière,
Rencontres de Minerve
, 4.
13
Martinière,
Médée resuscitée
, 4.
14
Martinière,
Remonstrances charitables
, 8-12.
15
See Mayor,
The Poison King
, 220, 237â238.
16
Martinière, Letter to Molé, 2.
17
Martinère,
Les sentimens d'un vray médecin
. 1.
18
Martinière,
Rencontres de Minerve
, 2.
19
Martinière,
Les sentimens d'un vray médecin
, 6.
20
Lamy, “Lettre escrite à Monsieur Moreau,” 10: “Il [Denis] s'est creû vivement offencé de ce que j'ai tâché quoiqu' innocemment d'étouffer dès le berceau les esperences (He [Denis] believed himself to be so fully insulted by my efforts, however innocent, to suffocate in the cradle [his] hopes”); Martinière,
Remonstrances charitables
, 1: “Pour la peine que je prends à tâcher d'étouffer dans le berceau ce Monstre transfusionnaire” (For the trouble that I take to suffocate in the cradle this transfusionist Monster”).
21
Martinière, Letter to Molé, 1.
22
Martinière, Letter to Colbert, 1.
23
Ibid., 3.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
26
Loux,
Martinière
, 15.
27
Chapelain to Régnier de Graff, 28 August 1671. It was the same poet Chapelain who helped orchestrate the demise of Montmor's private academy, providing Colbert with a list of men he might poach.
28
Chapelain to Régnier de Graff, 28 August 1671.
29
Foiret, “L'Hôtel de Montmor,” 320.
30
Denis,
Discours sur l'astrologie judiciaire,
1, 36.
31
Denis, Conference of April 30, 1673, reported in
Philosophical Transactions
on May 30, 1673; “Extract of a Letter, Written to the Publisher by M. Denys from Paris; Giving Notice of an Admirable Liquor, Instantly Stopping the Blood of Arteries Prickt or Cut, Without Any Suppuration, or Without Leaving Any Scar or Cicatrice,”
Philosophical Transactions
, 1673, vol. 8: 6039, “Experiments Made at London Concerning the Liquor Sent out of France, Which is There Famous for Staunching of the Blood Arteries as Well as Veins,”
Philosophical Transactions
, 1673, vol. 8: 6052â6059.
32
Blundell, “On the Transfusion of Blood.”
33
Blundell,
The Principles and Practice of Obstetricy
, 247, 337, 580, 838. Blundell acknowledged that he was also inspired by the work of John Henry Leacock, who was experimenting with animal-to-animal transfusions at the same time.
34
Blundell, “On the Transfusion of Blood,” 60.
35
Ibid., 75. The idea that animal blood could be transfused to humans came definitively to an end in the mid-1870s. E. Ponfick, a pathologist, confirmed that mixing blood of two different species led to lysis, or cell disintegration, resulting in a life-threatening reaction in the recipient. L. Landois reviewed all known transfusions in humansâ478 in allâfrom the earliest beginnings in the cases of Denis and Lower. One hundred and twenty twenty-nine of the donors had been animals,
the remainder were human donors. He calculated that one-third of the patients receiving animal blood survived. The results were more promising for human-to-human transfusions, where more than one-half survived. Diamond, “A History of Blood Transfusion,” 672â673. As Diamond notes, there were advocates for animal donors in human transfusions as late as 1928.
36
Starr,
Blood
, 37.
37
Schneider, “Transfusion in Peace and War,” 113.
38
Other attempts included the use of leech saliva, which contains the anticoagulant hirudin, or allowing the blood to clot and then scooping out the clots from the blood before administering it to the recipient. Diamond, “A History of Blood Transfusion,” 671â672. And in the late 1860s, the Englishman John Braxton Hicksâwho is better known for his work on obstetric contractionsâadded phospate of soda, a common ingredient in early fountain drinks, to donor blood. While it did reduce clotting, it proved fatal to the recipient in every case.