94 MEMOIR OF MAGENDIE. 



siciaus, surgeons, and apothecaries. "In the seqnel," says Fontenelle, "the 

 physician was divided into three; not, hoAvever, that one of the ancients was 

 worth three of modern times." Three might suffice for the days of Fontenelle; 

 at present it would be necessary to divide into fonr. Under a vigorous impulse, 

 which is not yet spent, a new science had established its right of naturalization 

 in our schools. Physiology, full of promise, lending itself readily to doubt and 

 controversy, captivated the enterprising genius of Magendie, and opened for him 

 a path to independent distinction. 



"We anatomists," said the old academician, Mery, "are like the porters of 

 Paris, who know all the streets, even to the smallest and most obscure, but who 

 knov/ nothing of what is passing within the dwellings." Physiology is precisely 

 the knowledge of what is passing within the human dwelling. 



The study of the forces by which life is nourished and maintained was cultivated 

 in antiquity only by Galen, whose genius cast upon it some admirable gleams 

 of intelligence. Along silence followed ; more philosophic than practical, more 

 inc[uisitive than indispensable, at least in the beaten routine of human culture, 

 this science was transmitted without progress to modern times. In the seven- 

 teenth century, an English physician, guided by some confused lights derived from 

 a school of Italy, and protected by an enlightened sovereign, ventured, in spite 

 of popular prejudice, to practice upon living animals experiments which had be- 

 come indispensable for the solution of the problem he had proposed for investi- 

 gation. In this way Harvey detected the secret mechanism by which heat and 

 life are maintained in the animal organism, and demonstrated the circulation of 

 the blood. This discovery was a catastrophe for our old Faculties,* accustomed 

 to enjoy in peace all the sweets of time-honored ignorance; they protested, they 

 conspired, but in vain ; the clay of their ascendency was at an end. 



From the identical school in which Rabelais had taken his degrees before 

 going forth to scourge fools and false knowledge with the lash of his caustic 

 genius, proceeded, in 164S, a young man who, applying himself to persistent 

 research, succeeded, like Harvey, in demonstrating a grand phenomenon, the 

 course of the chyle, thereby completing the explanation of our vivifying forces. 

 The admirable discovery of Pecquet has scarcely. availed, however, to save his 

 name from oblivion.f 



Expelled by the vindictive thunders of our medical councils, physiology fled 

 for refuge to a German university, to Gottingen. There, under the inspiration 

 of Haller, was opened a series of delicate and profound investigations,^ ascending 

 from the study of the organs to that of the springs by which they are set in ac- 

 tion, a progression which leads to the loftiest summits of philosophy. 



At length appeared, at the commencement of the present century, the daring 

 genius for whom was reserved the distioguished mission of popularizing phys- 



^ See my Avoik entitled Histoire de la Decouverte de la Circulation du Sang. Paris, 1857, 

 (second edition. ) 



t No eloge of Pecquet has been read in our academy. Astruc barely names him in his His- 

 toire de la^Faculie de Medicine de Montpellier; and I have nowhere been able to find the date 

 of his birth. Condorcet, in his Liste dcs Mcmhrcs de V Ancienne Academic, contents himself 

 with sayinfv : '• He made in his youth, while at Montpellier, the discovery of the thoracic 

 duct and of the reservoir of the chyle." Now, Pecquet did not make the discovery of the 

 thoracic duct, made nearly a century before by Eustaehins. fie made that of the reservoir 

 of the chyle. He traced— and this was the capHal point— ail the lacteal or chyliferous vessels 

 (which Aselli, who had discovered them, still Supposed to pvoceed to the liver) to that reser- 

 voir, by that reservoir to the thoracic duct, rfnd by ths thoracic duct to the heart, thus 

 changing the whole doctrine on the course of toe chyla. (.See my Histoire de la Dccouvcrte 

 de la Circulation du Snrig. ) Sprengel very properly says : ".' Cei tainly the discovery of Pec- 

 quet shines not less in the history of ouv art than the truth for the first time clemon.strated by 

 Harvey." (Histoire de la Medicine.) The truth would Ue, the discovery of Pecquet yields, 

 in physiology, only to that of Harvey. 



t The experimental analysis of the vital forces begins v/ith the two fine memoirs of Haller 

 on sensibility and on irritability. (See my wort entitled De la Vie et de V Intelligence, second 

 part, p. 69.) 



