Queries,Answers and Unsolved Problems in Eighteenth Century Biology

Daudin H. , Cuvier et Lamarck. Les classes zoologiques et l'idée de série animale (1790–1830) (Paris, 1926), ii, ch. x; Omodeo P. , “La classification et la phylogénie dans l'oeuvre de Lamarck” in Colloque international “Lamarck” (Paris, 1–3 juillet, 1971). The phrase “march of nature” was not Lamarck's alone; it was part of the everyday vocabulary of naturalists in the eighteenth and in the first half of the nineteenth century. It was Lamarck however who gave it the meaning of evolution. He could not use the word ‘evolution’ because since Haller (1757) it had meant the development of the parts of the organism.

Lavoisier A. Laplace P. , “Mémoire sur la chaleur”, Histoire de l'Académie des Sciences (1780), 355–408; Lavoisier A. et Seguin A. , “Premier mémoire sur la respiration des animaux”, Histoire de l'Académie des Sciences (1789), 566–84.

Lavoisier A. , “Rapport sur les prisons”, Oeuvres (Paris, 1865), iii, 465; Lavoisier A. , “Rapport … de l'examen du projet d'un nouvel Hôtel-Dieu”, ibid, 604.

Haller A. V. , Mémoires sur la nature sensible et irritable des parties du corps animal (Lausanne, 1756–60; 4 vols, trad. du latin par le Dr Tissot). It is necessary to' read all four volumes to get a clear idea of the controversies raised by Haller's experimental demonstration of the independence of irritability (contractility) and sensitivity. O. Temkin has written the preface to Haller's two basic memoirs, reproduced following an English translation (1755) based on Tissot's French translation (Bulletin of the history of medicine, iv (1936), 651–99). The French word sensibilité was translated in English by sensibility. Its real physiological meaning is sensitivity. This English word has no equivalent in French. The confusion is of lesser importance so long as it concerns the upper vertebrates on which Haller experimented. The situation is different with lower animals possessing a rudimentary nervous system or none at all, like vegetables.

The word ‘Insects’ is used in its post-Linnaean meaning. Linnaeus divided the invertebrates into two heterogeneous groups, worms, and insects, in addition to infusoria. Cuvier and in particular Lamarck (who coined the term invertebrates) divided them into ten classes. Lamarck , Philosophie zoologique (Paris, 1809), and Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres (Paris, 1815), i.

Trembley A. , Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire d'un polype d'eau douce, à bras en forme de cornes (Leyden, 1744). An unauthorized edition appeared the same year in Paris. See also Baker J. R. , Abraham Trembley of Geneva. Scientist and philosopher, 1710–1784 (London, 1952); and Trembley M. , Correspondance inédite entre Réaumur et Abraham Trembley (Genève, 1943).

These problems are discussed in a book shortly to appear: Schiller J. , Classification and physiology. Historical relations.

Cohn F. , “On the natural history of the Protococcus fluvialis”. Abstracted by Busk G. ( Royal Society botanical and philosophical memoirs (London, 1853), 523) from the original paper in Nova acta Acad. Caes. Leop. Carolin. Naturae Curios. Bonn., xii (1850), 650.

Rouelle H. , (No title), Journal de médecine, xxxix (1773), 12.

Berthollet C. L. , “Recherches sur la nature des substances animales”, Histoire de l'Académie des Sciences (1780), 120–5; “Suite des recherches sur la nature des substances animales et sur leurs rapports avec les substances végétales”, ibid, 331.

Irritability should be conceived as the intermediary agent between the external environment (the stimulus) and the organism which responds by motion, secretion, choice of the aliment, depending on the organ involved. Seen in this perspective its origin goes back to Aristotle who calls it sensitivity, which is his criterion of animality. Irritability and sensibility (sensitivity) were confused till Haller. It is important to stress that according to Glisson, living matter is inert and needs an external stimulus to be activated. Inside the organism an organ is external to another organ which may be irritated by it.

Fontana F. , “Lettre sur l'ergot et la trémelle”, Observations sur la physique, sur l'histoire naturelle et sur les arts, vii (1776), 51; Spallanzani L. , Opuscule de physique animale et végétale (trans. Sénebier J. , Paris, 1787), ii, 279 (Italian edition, Modena, 1776).

Diderot D. , Eléments de physiologie (Paris, 1915), 259.

The most important documentary evidence for Haller, partly unedited, has been collected and arranged by E. Hintzsche at the Library of Medical History, at the University of Bern.

Cigna J. F. (1734–90) in Haller , Mémoires, iii, 287.

Haller , Mémoires, i, 87.

Basically, Glisson did not separate perception from motility which together with appetency are the three faculties of irritability (natural irritability). The nervous system participates in the other two forms of irritability, ‘sensitive’ and ‘voluntary’. Glisson's structural unit is, like Haller's, the fibre.

The term irritability has become a source of confusion because each physiologist has given it a different interpretation from Glisson's. Haller, Bichat, Brown, Flourens, Dutrochet and Vulpian, among others, have contributed to this confusion. See also, Schiller J. , “Physiology's struggle for independence…”, History of science, vii (1968), 64–89, p. 89, note 83.

Birch T. , History of the Royal Society (London, 1756), i, 34.

See v. Sachs J. , Histoire de la botanique (trans. de Varigny H. , Paris, 1892). The first German edition was in 1875.

Haller , Mémoires, i, 87; Elémens de physiologie (Prima elementa physiologiae) (trans. Bordenave , Paris, 1769), i, 251.

Bonnet C. , Contemplations de la nature (Amsterdam, 1766), ii, 81.

The paternity of the chain of being is wrongly attributed to Charles Bonnet (see the article ‘Bonnet’ in the Dictionary of scientific biography). It starts with Aristotle ( Historia animalium , viii, 588 b; De partibus animalium, iv, 5, 681 a, 13–19) and dominated the thought of biologists until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Its meaning also is misunderstood. For instance, the confusion is made between the chain of being and Lamarck's animal series, whereas Lamarck, like Cuvier, was opposed to it. This confusion is perpetuated in the article on Cuvier in the Dictionary of scientific biography. All anatomical zoologists opposed it. This error is avoided by Lovejoy in The great chain of being, but this work, warmly recommended to students, is mostly philosophical and literary and of little value in the history of science. The chain of being raises fundamental problems in the history of zoology, of comparative anatomy, of classification, and of general physiology, which are ignored. See Schiller J. , “L'échelle des êtres et la série chez Lamarck” in Colloque international “Lamarck” (Paris, 1971), 87.

Bonnet , Lettres à M. l'abbé Spallanzani. Edizione critica … di Carlo Castellani (Milano, 1971), xlviii, 10, 404.

The word polyp was coined by Réaumur (Trembley, correspondance inédite, 63) and has been a source of confusion in zoology because it encompassed a great variety of unrelated marine invertebrates. In 1853 J. Allman drew attention to the resulting disadvantages (“On the anatomy of the cardilophora”, Philosophical transactions , (1853), 143, 367. The word hydra was used by Linnaeus in 1746 following Trembley who used it in 1741 (Correspondance inédite, 75).

Bonnet , “Traite d'insectologie” in Oeuvres d'histoire naturelle et de philosophie (Neuchâtel, 1779), i, 169–70.

Cuvier G. , Histoire des sciences naturelles (Paris, 1841–5), iii, 256.

Savioz R. , Mémoires autobiographiques de Charles Bonnet de Genève (Paris, 1948), 84, 100–105.

Trembley A. , Instructions d'un père à ses enfants sur la nature et la religion (Genève, 1775).

For the seat of the soul, see Savioz R. , La philosophie de Charles Bonnet de Genève (Paris, 1948), 137.

Bourguet L. , Lettres philosophiques sur la formation des sels et des cristaux et sur la génération et le mécanisme organique des plantes et des animaux (Amsterdam, 1729).

The word ‘organization’ is occasionally found before the eighteenth century, as in Hooke and Malpighi, and even in a fourteenth century medical manuscript. From the eighteenth century onwards, the word and the concept are adopted by every single naturalist and it would be tedious to assemble a list of names. There is no publication dealing with this problem but useful elements may be found in Hall T. S. , Ideas of life and matter (Chicago and London, 1969), ii. A chapter is devoted to this problem in the forthcoming book, Schiller J. , Classification and physiology.

Aristotle , De anima, i, 5, 411 b 24–7.

Réaumur A. , Mémoires sur les insectes (Paris, 1742), vi, lxii.

Needham J. T. , “Concerning certain … worms discovered in smutty corn”, Philosophical transactions, xlii (1743), 639–41; Baker H. , Employment for the microscope (second edn, London, 1764), 253.

Spallanzani L. , “Observations et expériences sur quelques animaux surprenants que l'observateur peut à son gré faire passer de la mort à la vie”, Opuscules de physique animale et végétale (Paris, 1787), ii, 299.

Bonnet C. , Considérations sur les corps organisés (Amsterdam, 1762), ii, 76.

Beccari J. B. , “De frumento”, De Bononiensi scientiarum et artium institutio atque academia commentarii, iii (1745), 122.

The root from which, according to Schwann, these cells had their origin is directly related to the idea of a glutinous generative substance. Schwann pointed this out and Valentin underlined this fact. See the English translation of Mikroscopische Untersuchungen (London, 1847).

Bonnet , Lettres, 153.

Ibid., 284.

Gluten (mucus), also called ‘animal-vegetable substance’, is the primordial homogeneous substance from which the cellular tissue and ultimately all tissues and organs originate. Its history extends over three centuries from Cesalpino to Virchow. As in the case of organization, there is no unique bibliographical source, as no author over this period failed to mention it. See Goodman D. C. , “The application of medical criteria to biological classification in the eighteenth century”, Medical history, xv (1971), 25–44.

Bonnet , Palingénésie, i, 86.

Schiller J. , “La place de Vésale dans l'histoire de la physiologie”, Histoire et biologie, i (1968), 25–43.

Haller , Mémoires, i, 51; iv, 101; see also, French R. K. , Robert Whytt, the soul and medicine (London, 1969), ch. vi.

Naturalists claimed to have seen Descartes's subtle matter and Epicurus's atoms through the microscope. Baker H. , The microscope made easy (London, 1769), 64.

Initially Haller was an epigenesist (Prima lineae physiol. (Gottingen, 1747)) and became a preformationist following his studies on the chick embryo (Sur la formation du coeur dans le poulet (2 vols, Lausanne, 1758)). He believed he had shown that the yolk membranes were continuous with the intestine, thus concluding that the embryo existed before fertilization. Wolf C. F. , with whom Haller had a resounding controversy, demonstrated that the intestine was not preformed (“De formatione intestinorum precipue …”, Novi comment. Acad. Sci. Imp. (Petropolis), xii (1768), 43 and 403; xiii (1769), 478). For Haller, as for Bonnet and Spallanzani, the preformed organs were invisible, on account of their minuteness and translucency.

It concerns expressions like “vitalistic materialists”, “metaphysical mechanists” or “physico-chemical vitalism”. See Schiller J. , Claude Bernard et les problèmes scientifiques de son temps (Paris, 1967), 211.

Bonnet , Palingénésie, ii, 91.

For inanimate organized bodies, see Bourguet L. , Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des pétrifications dans les quatre parties du monde (La Haye, 1742); and de Buffon G. L. L. , Histoire naturelle des minéraux (Paris, 1783), “De la figuration des minéraux”.

Needham J. , in Spallanzani L. , Nouvelles recherches sur les découvertes microscopiques et la genèse des corps organisés … avec des notes de Needham (Londres et Paris, 1769), 155.

Bonnet , Lettres , 186. Spallanzani did not seem convinced of the usefulness of this interpretation. See: Opuscules de physique animale et végétale (Genève, 1777), i, 242.

Haller , Mémoires, i, 5.

Bordeu T. , Dissertatio physiologica de sensu generiae consideratio (Montpelii, 1742).

For Diderot, see Diderot , “Le rêve de d'Alembert”, in Oeuvres philosophiques. Textes établis… par Paul Vernière (Paris, 1956), 249; Mayer J. , Diderot, homme de science (Rennes, 1959); Denis Diderot, Correspondance établie par Georges Roth (Paris, 1955–70).

Cudworth R. , The true intellectual system of the universe (London, 1678).

Grew N. , Cosmologia sacra (London, 1701).

Laborquere F. , “Dissertatio medica de motum vitalium … 1740” in v. Haller A. , Disputationum anatomicarum selectarum (Gottingae, 1749), iv, 481.

One example is the production of dextrin and glucose from glycogen obtained in the laboratory by acid hydrolysis. The organism obtains the same compound by enzymes acting in an alkaline medium. This is the meaning of the sentence “procedures proper to the organism”. In both cases the same chemical laws obtain, as revealed by the end products which are the same.

See ref. 32.

In an excellent article, F. C. Bing goes back into history to find the origin of the word ‘metabolism’, attributed to Schwann. He attributes the paternity of the word to the German Sigwart (“The history of the word metabolism”, Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences, xxvi (1971), 158–80). However, the idea of metabolic exchanges is older and was known by different names: “intestinal movement” (Encyclopédie, Bichat, Lamarck, Magendie, Blainville etc.); “tourbillon vital” (Cuvier); “double mouvement” (Dutrochet); “Stoffwechsel” (Gmelin); “organic creation” and “destruction” (Claude Bernard); “assimilation and dissimilation” and finally “anabolism” and “catabolism”.

Cassirer E. , The philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston, 1955), 9.