198 MEMOIRS OF 



ations, taken from the same 61oge : — " Perhaps 

 I may be blamed for recalling these sad recol- 

 lections ; but where a celebrated man has been 

 so unfortunate as to be accused, as M. Fourcroy 

 was, — where this accusation occasioned the tor- 

 ment of his life, — the historian would in vain 

 strive to bury it in oblivion, by being himself 

 silent. We ought now to say, that if, in the 

 strict researches we have made, we had found 

 the slightest proof of so horrible an atrocity, no 

 human power could have forced us to sully our 

 lips by his eloge, to make the roofs of this temple 

 resound with our praises, — this temple, which 

 ought to be no less the asylum of honour than 

 of genius." 



To Dessesserts, the physician, and subject of 

 the next eloge, the French owe the banishment 

 of those horrible machines of whalebone, those 

 swathing clothes, those hot-houses, where the 

 minds and bodies of infants were imprisoned 

 from their birth. By M. Dessesserts were those 

 mothers recalled to their duty, who abandoned 



arrest, his own life was threatened, and all power of being 

 useful to others was taken from him. Lavoisier fell a vtctim 

 to the revolutionary monsters, and M. Fourcroy was accused 

 of taking a part in that which freed him from a powerful 

 rival. 



