BAYLE BAYLEY. 



459 



that time she kept up a literary correspondence with 

 him. 



The death of his father and of his two brothers, 

 together with the religious persecutions in France, 

 induced him to undertake his Commentaire phtioso- 

 phique sur ces Paroles deVEvangile; Contrains-les 

 eCentrer ; which, in regard to style and tone, is not 

 worthy of him. B. himself was unwilling to acknow- 

 ledge it ; but Jurieu, who probably recognised its 

 author by the zeal with which toleration is defended 

 in this work, attacked it with violence. His hatred 

 only waited for a pretence to break out against B. ; he 

 found it in the Avis aux Refugies, a work in which 

 the Protestants are treated with little ceremony. 

 Jurieu not only accused B. of being the author of this 

 work (which certainly is not his), but also of being 

 the soul of a party devoted to France, in opposition 

 to the Protestants and allied powers. B. repelled 

 these charges in two publications ; but the calumny 

 prevailed. In 1G93, the magistrates of Rotterdam 

 removed him from his office, aiid forbade him to give 

 private instruction. 



He now devoted all his attention to the composition 

 of his Dictionnaire historique et critique, which he first 

 published in 1696, in two vols., fol. This was the 

 first work whicli appeared under his name. Jurieu 

 opposed him anew, and caused the consistory, in 

 which he had the greatest influence, to make a severe 

 attack upon him. B. promised to remove every 

 thing which the consistory deemed offensive ; but, 

 finding the public had other views, and preferring 

 rather the satisfaction of his readers than that of his 

 judges, he left the work, with the exception of a few 

 trifles, unaltered. He found two new enemies in 

 Jacquelot and Le Clerc, who both attacked his 

 religion : others persecuted him as the enemy of his 

 sect and his new country. These contests increased 

 his bodily infirmities. His lungs became inflamed ; 

 but he was unwilling to use any medical applications 

 against a disorder which he considered as hereditary 

 and incurable. He died, so to speak, with the pen 

 in his hand, in 1706, at the age of fifty-nine years. 



" Bayle," says Voltaire, " is the first of logicians 

 and sceptics. His greatest enemies must confess that 

 tiirre is not a line in his works which contains 

 an open aspersion of Christianity ; but his warmest 

 apologists must acknowledge, that there is not a page 

 in his controversial writings which does not lead the 

 reader to doubt, and often to scepticism." He com- 

 pares himself to Homer's cloud-compelling Jupiter. 

 " My talent," he says, " consists in raising doubts ; 

 but they are only doubts." The confidence of most 

 theologians induced him to undertake to prove that 

 several points are not so certain and so evident as 

 they imagined. But he gradually passed these 

 limits : his penetration caused him to doubt even the 

 most universally acknowledged facts. Yet he never 

 attacked the great principles of morality. Though 

 an admirable logician, he was so little acquainted 

 with physics, that even the discoveries of Newton 

 were unknown to him. His style is natural and 

 rloar, but often prolix, careless, and incorrect. He 

 himself calls his Dictionnaire " une compilation in- 

 iorme des passages cousus a la queue les uns des 

 nutres" Without assenting implicitly to this modest 

 judgment, we must confess that the articles, in-them- 

 selves, are of little value, and that they serve only 

 as a pretext for the notes, in which the author 

 displays, at the same time, his learning and the power 

 of his logic. The character of B. was gentle, ami- 

 able, disinterested, highly modest, and peaceable : 

 he devoted himself entirely to literature. The most 

 esteemed edition of his Dictionnaire historimie is that 

 of 1 740, in four vols., fol. (an edition was also printed 

 at Bale, the same year). At the Hague appeared 



the CEuvres diverges de P. Bayle (also four vols., fol.) 

 An edition of his Diet, histor., in sixteen vols., printed 

 with great typographical beauty, was published, in 

 1820, by Desoer, in Paris : it contains notes, and the 

 life of the author. In the Disc, prelimin., the editor 

 Beuchot, reviews the eleven former editions. Gotts- 

 ched has translated the Diet, into German (Leipsic, 

 1741-44, four vols., fol.) An English translation, 

 with considerable additions, by Th. Birch, Lockman 

 and others, was published, 1734-41, ten vols., fol. 



BAYLEY, Richard, M.D., was born at Fairfield, 

 Connecticut, in the year 1745. Having completed 

 his medical studies, he went to London, to attend the 

 lectures and hospitals. After little more than a 

 year's residence in that city, he returned to New 

 York, and commenced practice there in 1772. At 

 this period, his attention was first drawn to the then 

 prevalent and fatal croup, which had been treated as 

 the putrid sore throat. Observing how fatal was 

 the use of stimulants and antiseptics, he examined 

 the nature of the disease, and became convinced 

 that it was of an inflammatory character. He ac- 

 cordingly treated it as "such, with decided success, 

 and, soon after the publication of his View of the 

 Croup, his opinions and treatment of it were uni- 

 versally adopted. In the autumn of 1775, B. revisit- 

 ed London, where he spent a winter, and, in the fol- 

 lowing spring, returned to New York, in the capacity 

 of surgeon in the English army under Howe. He 

 resigned this post in 1777, and, during the rest of his 

 life, continued the practice of his profession in the 

 same city. In 1787, he lectured on surgery. In 

 1788, he lost his valuable collection in morbid anato- 

 my, and some delicate preparations, by the violence 

 of the famous "doctors' mob," who broke into his 

 house, and carried off and burned his cabinet. In the 

 spring of 1792, he was appointed professor of anato- 

 my in Colombia college, and, in 1793, became pro- 

 fessor of surgery, which was his favourite subject. 

 His lectures were clear, precise, and practical. As 

 an optician, he acquired great celebrity, and also as 

 an experienced and successful lithotomist. When the 

 yellow fever desolated New York, soon after the re- 

 volution, doctor B. devoted himself to personal atten- 

 tion to the sick, and became practically familiar with 

 the disease, and its most successful remedies. He like- 

 wise investigated its cause, and declared that it was the 

 filth which polluted the docks and some of the streets, 

 affirming, " that when a more rigid police prevailed, 

 to free the city from nuisances, no more would be 

 heard of particular diseases." In 1797, he published 

 his work On Yellow Fever, wherein he proved the 

 malady to be of local origin. So strong was his belief 

 on this point, and so clear his perception of the cause 

 of the fever, that he predicted the very spot where it 

 afterwards appeared, in the year 1799. In the year 

 1795 or 6, he was appointed health physician for the 

 port of New York, and, in 1798, published Letters 

 from the Health Office, submitted to the New York 

 Common Council, being a series of letters in the years 

 1796-7-8. One letter, dated Dec. 4, 1798, assigns the 

 reasons why the fever in '98 was more extensively 

 prevalent than in '95, 6, or 7, which he considers to 

 be the rains flooding large portions of the city, its low 

 levels, new-made ground, and a hot sun. In 1798, 

 a correspondence took place between the cities of 

 New York and Philadelphia, in the course of which 

 a proposition was made by the committee of the latter 

 to that of the former, soliciting their co-operation in 

 a memorial to the general government for a quaran- 

 tine law. This gave doctor B., who was on the New 

 York committee, an opportunity of impressing upon 

 the general government the propriety of establishing 

 a lazaretto, below and quite out from the city or port 

 of entry. He was the person to whom the state of 



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