CHARLES RICHET AND THE SOCIAL ROLE OF MEDICAL MEN
by
William H. Schneider
History Department
Indiana University - Indianapolis
Published in : J Med Biogr. 2001 Nov;9(4):213-9.
In 1959 C.P. Snow delivered a lecture entitled, "The Two
Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" which maintained that
scientists and other intellectuals in modern Western society "can no
longer communicate with each other on the plane of their major
intellectual concern." At the time, Snow's hypothesis produced a storm
of reaction from both those who disagreed with it and those who agreed
in dismay. In subsequent years the idea of "two cultures" has generally
been accepted as true and maybe even unavoidable, but there have also
been enough noteworthy exceptions to suggest a countertrend. These have
been primarily scientists who have crossed the boundary to offer their
opinions on everything from nuclear disarmament to the biological basis
of human interaction. Although Einstein may be the archetype of this
phenomenon, since the 1970s several medical men have followed his
example of interpreting modern science to the general public. Lewis
Thomas and Peter Medawar's writings are among the most prolific of
English and American examples. France has also had its share of modern
medical men in recent decades who crossed the boundary between the two
cultures. These would include François Jacob, Jacques Monod and
Jean Hamburger. The film "Mon oncle de l'Amerique" achieved some
popularity based on the sociobiology of Henri Laborit. France, it would
seem, has an even earlier tradition along these lines, as reflected by
the work of Alexis Carrel and Jean Rostand in the 1930s. (1)
These individuals can best be studied on a case basis to determine the
nature of the phenomenon as well as some reasons for it. The subject of
this paper is Charles Richet, a man whose life meets three essential
criteria necessary to a model of a medical man as social philosopher:
scientific stature, interest in non-scientific matters and access to
the general public. In addition, Richet's career covered the end of the
nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, a time not long
after the two cultures diverged.
Charles Richet was born in 1850, the son of a noted surgeon who was a
professor of the Paris Faculty of Medicine.(2) Charles followed his
father in choosing medicine for a career but with a specialty in
physiology which led him towards experimental science rather than his
father's clinical practice. His credentials as a researcher were first
established by work on animal body temperature (it was Richet who
showed that dogs cooled themselves by panting), and most importantly
the discovery of anaphylaxis, the increased sensitivity of the body to
moderate doses of some poisons which rather than building up an
immunity, produce fatal reactions to even the slightest subsequent
injections. Anaphylactic shock, as Richet called it, was not only
helpful in explaining the mechanism of poisoning, but its similarities
to infection led him to suggest it as a key to understanding the action
of disease, i.e., by the creation of poisons within the body.
Richet was named to the Chair of Physiology at the Paris Medical School
early in his career, in fact while his father was still on the faculty,
and in 1913 he received the Nobel Prize for physiology. Throughout his
career, Richet demonstrated broad interests both scientific and
otherwise. These ranged from psychology and parapsychology to the
writing of poetry, drama and literature. Richet was a popularizer of
science in his capacity as editor of the Revue scientifique and frequent contributor of scientific columns to journals such as the Revue des deux mondes. He wrote books on eugenics and pacifism, and worked with the pioneers of French aviation Victor Tatin and Louis Breguet.(3)
When Richet died in 1935 it was not just noted in scientific journals.
Detailed obituaries appeared throughout the French press, from
establishment newspapers like Le Temps to worker dailies such as Le Populaire and Le Peuple
which ran a front page obituary including a photo of the scientist "who
passionately campaigned for universal peace."(4) All of the notices
attested to Richet's scientific credentials. The scientific journals,
in addition to mentioning Richet's work on body temperature and
anaphylaxis, also praised his doctoral research on digestion and
stomach acid. When Richet was still an intern in surgery, his mentor
Verneuil treated a patient who swallowed a caustic and had to have his
esophagus removed and replaced with a tube to the stomach. The
experiments Richet conducted because he could observe the action of the
stomach directly, led him to the conclusion that stomach juice was
primarily hydrochloric acid. This work also led him to choose
physiology over surgery as a specialty.
There was less frequent mention by the scientific journals of Richet's
more ambiguous results in trying to immunize or cure subjects by
injections with serum from those previously immunized. Richet had seen
a demonstration in 1880 by Pasteur who immunized chickens against
cholera. (5) Although Richet was quick attempt such cures on humans,
the diseases he tried to treat - tuberculosis and cancer - proved far
more complex than the cholera, rabies and diphtheria which the
pasteuriens found more susceptible to cure. This lack of success led
Richet to explore another means of curing TB based on observations of
dogs fed a raw meat diet. Not only were they found to be more resistant
to tuberculosis but a diet of only the meat juice cured some dogs in
early stages of the disease.
Richet announced the results in dramatic fashion at the annual lecture
to the Friends of the Sorbonne in 1901. After describing the lengthy
process during which scores of dogs succumbed to the disease (Richet
had never been a favorite of animal lovers), he concluded the lecture
by having one of the survivors, a healthy black poodle, jump up on the
podium from his hiding place under a table. The next day, a city
councilman who had attended the lecture visited Richet and offered to
use a recent donation to the city of 1.5 millions frs. for the
construction of a clinic in a poor section of the XXe arrondissement to
treat TB patients by Richet's new discovery. The results of the new
approach were disappointing when applied to humans, in part because of
the high expectations, but also because of the amount of meat and
length of time necessary for the cure (400 gr. per day of raw meat or
40 gr. of an extract.(6)
These last two research projects show something of the breadth of
Richet's interests which led him to the outer bounds of science and
beyond. Most important of these was his work on psychic phenomena.
Richet's first experience was at age 16, when he and his sister
succeeded in hypnotizing one of her girlfriends. He studied hypnotism
in more detail during medical school despite a warning from his father,
and published a work on somnabulism based on experiments he continued
while an intern in the 1870s.(7) According to Richet he became even
more deeply involved in the subject after a visit to Paris in 1884 by
the Russian psychologist Aksakov who told him of an Italian medium
named Eusapia whom Richet not only visited but invited to his
Mediterranean island home for three months. There she was studied by
such visitors as the English writer Frederic Myers, Richet's fellow
physiologist Arsene d'Arsonval and other scientists with an interest in
psychism such as the astronomer Camille Flammarion and the Curies.(8)
The following year Richet, the Englishman William Crookes and others
founded the Society for Psychical Research with Richet as the first
president. He kept an active interest in the subject for the next
thirty years.
It is not surprising that the scientific obituaries of Richet played
down this aspect of his work, being apologetic at best, if the psychic
research was ever mentioned at all. One article called his results "as
yet uncertain and debatable," and another otherwise laudatory eulogy
called the interest "a chimera", one of Richet's "secretly cultivated
gardens" of interest.(9) This is clearly wrong in the sense that
Richet's work on parapsychology was widely known and typical of the
kind of subjects that endeared him to the wider public. In fact,
Richet's first novel Possession
(published in 1887) was an attempt to write about psychism outside the
constraints of scientific or even general interest publications.(10)
This and another of his novels, Soeur Marthe, were later
performed on stage with Sarah Bernhardt in the lead. Yet this was not
the only reason for Richet's ventures into the literary world. He
published poetry as early as 1874 with a friend Paul Fournier under the
pseudonym Charles Epheyre - the last name being the French
pronunciation of the letters F and R.
Richet's literary ventures were typical of a curiosity that led him to
indulge a wide variety of interests. For example, a trip to Egypt,
Palestine and Syria in 1876 spawned a lifelong interest in Egyptology.
His joined Frederic Passy's Société des pacifistes in
1884, thus beginning his work on the problem of war that included
articles, books and his presidency of the French peace league as well
as service on the international committee for the arbitration of
disputes. When Richet received his Nobel Prize for physiology, the
German pacifist Bertha von Suttner wrote him that he should have been
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize instead. Richet met Victor Tatin while
both were working in the laboratory of the physiologist Jules Marey;
and from the late 1880s to the time of the Wright brothers flight in
1904, they experimented with the construction of a heavier than air
craft. Richet's writings on the declining French birth rate prompted
him to become a co-founder of the French Alliance against Depopulation
in 1896, and he was an active member of the French Eugenics Society in
the years before and after the First World War.
The easy part of this paper is demonstrating that Richet had the
scientific stature, breadth of interest and access to the public to
make him an example of the modern medical man of two cultures. Things
become a little more difficult, however, in assessing some of the
reasons for it. For purposes of analysis, it is useful to group them
into two categories: internal and external. This is an
oversimplification, but it provides a convenient way of distinguishing
between those qualities of Richet himself which made him and his ideas
achieve the prominence they did, and the circumstances in which he
found himself - from family situation and social position to the
general temper of the times.
As for internal reasons, one could make a strong case that the
extraordinary nature of Richet himself was most responsible for his
prominence both as a scientist and social commentator. This would
include his tremendous energy coupled with an ambition to succeed (not
unrelated to the same family situation which both gave Richet career
advantages and at the same time put great pressure on him to measure up
to the standards set by his father.) For example, in 1902 at age 52,
Charles Richet had already achieved much that his father had done -- he
held a Chair at the Faculty of Medicine, he had conducted important
research in several areas of physiology, not to mention his other
interests beyond science. Yet this was precisely the time that Richet
started new work on poisons which ten years later led to his discovery
of anaphylaxis and, not coincidentally, the receipt of the Nobel Prize.
The importance Richet attached to such honors can also be seen in his
attempt to gain election to the Academy of Sciences. In this case the
workings of chance and academic politics which made it possible for his
appointment to the Faculty of Medicine at the early age of 37, delayed
his election to the Academy until 1914. But it was not for lack of
trying. Richet presented himself for candidacy no less than six times
between 1886 and 1914 before the 65 year-old Nobel laureate was finally
elected.(11)
Among the more specific abilities which helped Richet achieve his
scientific success was his interest in bibliography and a love of books
which Richet attributed to his great-grandfather, Antoine Renouard a
printer and book binder. Richet modeled his library on that of the
neurologist Charcot and he loved to lecture people on the advantages of
the new Dewey decimal classification system. Concerning the importance
of bibliography to scientific research, Richet wrote, "One has the
right to be wrong, ...[but] no right to ignore (completely) what one's
predecessors have written on the subject that one is studying."(12) Not
long after his appointment to the Faculty of Medicine, Richet began a Dictionary of Physiology
which ran to ten volumes by 1922. In addition, at the turn of the
century, Richet devised a classification system for all medical
literature, and then edited and published his Bibliographia Medica when the Index Catalogue of the American Surgeon-General (precursor of Index Medius)
ceased publication due to lack of subscribers. Unfortunately, three
years later Richet was forced him to drop the project for similar
reasons.(13)
Besides the advantages this wide reading in physiology and medicine
gave him, Richet also had a propensity to exploit new findings and
situations that presented themselves in his research. The example of
the accident which allowed him to study stomach digestion early in his
career has already been mentioned, as well as the chance observation of
dogs fed on raw meat who were exposed to tuberculosis. Similarly,
Richet's discovery of anaphylaxis was prompted by a remark made by
Prince Albert of Monaco while Richet was his guest on a yachting
cruise, that someone should study the poisonous sting of the Portuguese
Man-of-War jellyfish.(14)
Another valuable facet of Richet's approach to scientific research
which complemented his broad interests was his pragmatism. If a new
device was necessary for an experiment, Richet showed an eagerness and
interest where others might only have seen a delay. For example, after
beginning his research at the Faculty of Medicine in the late 1880s,
Richet saw a need for a more effective anesthetic than the chloroform
which was typically used but sometimes lethal. Together with his
assistants he devised a new compound of the old chloroform base and
sucrose which they called chloralose. Its effect was that of a hypnotic
sleep but with all of the animal's reflexes intact.(15) Similarly, for
his work on animal temperature regulation, Richet had to invent a very
sensitive calorimeter which utilized the expansion and contraction of
air in an enclosed chamber to measure the animal's body
temperature.(16)
Richet was not oblivious to the practical applications of his
discoveries. For example, he and some colleagues prescribed the
chloralose as a sedative and sleeping agent for friends and clients.
During the war Richet demonstrated the usefulness of chloralose as a
general anesthetic and also recommended it for childbirth in place of
the more dangerous ether. Another example of Richet's eye for practical
applications was his participation in a commercial venture to sell the
meat extract treatment for tuberculosis. This was also prompted by
frustration at the medical world's failure to accept the cure
immediately, but unfortunately for Richet and the others involved, the
contract to build a plant was signed just months before the outbreak of
the First World War.(17)
Common sense and practicality also characterized Richet's approach to
matters outside science, which is one reason his writings appealed to
the general public. Richet could not be called a complex or deep social
commentator. In fact, the subjects he wrote about tended to be rather
obvious or easily understood issues such as depopulation, pacifism and
eugenics. Richet's warnings about the decline of the French population
in 1882 were significantly earlier than others, but his two-part
article in the Revue des deux mondes was
essentially a matter of noticing a statistical trend (a drop in the
birthrate) and projecting it into the future.(18) He did an excellent
job of collecting comparative data for other countries and different
regions of France, but his conclusion was hardly radical. Richet
maintained that urbanization was the root cause of the problem; that
is, rural families with many children were moving to the cities where
the next generation decided to limit family size. Richet's solution to
the problem followed in a straightforward manner: encourage the rural
population to remain in agriculture through a combination of tax policy
and colonial expansion.(19)
Richet's eugenics also followed from a simple premise. As he stated,
Nothing is more extraordinary than our indifference to human selection.
One could laugh if it was not so bad. We improve breeds of chickens,
ducks, horses, pigs, lambs, even species of cauliflower, beets,
strawberries and violets! Man improves and perfects everything except
man himself.(20)
People might have disagreed with some of his proposals to eliminate the
weak and remove governmental support from the suffering, but the
problem and the ideas were clearly stated and understandable.
A final example of this approach can be seen in Richet's pacifism. His 1907 book Le Passé de la guerre et l'avenir de la paix was
a typical bibliographic survey of ideas and approaches to the problems
of war and international disputes, combined with straightforward,
commonsense arguments against war. For example, at the beginning of the
book, Richet referred to a fire that occurred at a crowded charity
bazaar, killing three hundred women.
Business was stopped, the theaters closed, newspapers in Paris and all
of France as well as other countries had articles on no other subject.
Heads of state sent telegrams of condolence. And justly so; this tragic
event provoked consternation and horror everywhere. One might even be
tempted to believe it was out of respect for human life. Alas! What
illusion! If we really had any respect for human life, we would show
more indignation at the sacrifices on the military altar. If we counted
the victims of the war of 1870, we would see it would take twenty years
with as many victims every day as at the charity bazaar to have the
same number of dead.(21)
Once again Richet demonstrated a knack for clearly stating the problem,
although this time his solution was more pragmatic than in the case of
his eugenic proposals. Richet called for a policy of selective
objection to unjust wars. He freely admitted the need for defense
against an unjust enemy, something that would make unilateral
disarmament folly. But a citizen could only be expected to serve his
country if his government was based on popular consultation. Richet, in
fact, called for a referendum before any mobilization or declaration of
war.(22)
This pragmatic position makes more understandable Richet's actions when
war broke out in 1914. Despite the French government's failure to hold
a referendum, Richet not only forewent any protest of involvement, but
at age 64 he undertook a project to, as Richet put it, "preach in Italy
the war against Germany." Leaving France in early September 1914 and
making use of his professional contacts at various universities, Richet
made speeches in half a dozen Italian cities. His message was the same
-- even if you cannot join France against Germany, at least support an
economic blockade.
Richet was astounded by the enthusiastic support he received from the
Italians. After one talk at the University of Bologna, the students
left the hall to march on the Austrian consulate where they broke the
windows. At Ferrara the hall for his speech was too small for the
crowd, so Richet spoke outside in a large courtyard.(23) His tour
lasted two months and was only cut short by a letter from the Rector of
the University of Paris urging him to return to teach his courses at
the Faculty of Medicine.
The success prompted Richet to propose a similar mission the following
year, this time to Rumania which was still neutral in the war. There
were strong cultural ties between France and Rumania, and Richet had
taught many Rumanian students at medical school. The logistics were
more complicated, however, requiring official sanction by the French
government, not to mention a circuitous route via Stockholm and Finland
to Russia, thence overland to Rumania. It was December of 1915 before
arrangements were made, but given the course of the war in the east,
Richet and his two companions (the physician Latour-Guyot and the
journalist Gavoty) could travel no further than Russia. [December of
any year was not a good time to travel there, let alone in 1915.] A
short tour of Russia was arranged instead which took them in January of
1916 to Petrograd and Kiev as well as Moscow where they addressed the
Duma.(24) After his return to France, Richet spent the remainder of the
war treating the wounded both in the rear and at the front.
Richet's scientific achievements and his interests beyond science were
remarkable, but they alone do not explain why he was able to gain
access to the public as readily as he did. Although his scientific
discoveries were important, they were not on a scale of Pasteur's or
Einstein's; i.e. of such import that the public would seek him out. Nor
were his other ideas on war, depopulation or eugenics sufficiently
novel to warrant the attention they received in the general interest
periodicals. The explanation for Richet's ability to give his
non-scientific ideas such a wide hearing lies in the external setting
in which he found himself. More specifically, it was his own social and
family connections, as well as the general times at the turn of the
century when science's stature among the public was reaching new
heights.
We have already seen some of the advantages Richet enjoyed by virtue of
his birth. The wealth which permitted him to indulge his broad
curiosity was a direct legacy of his father's fame and stature; and
this also played a role in Charles's early appointment to the Faculty
of Medicine.(25) Richet's family and professional ties also gave him
direct access to the most influential scientific circles of France,
including men like Marcelin Berthelot (in whose lab Richet worked after
medical school), who went on to a distinguished political career. But
perhaps most advantageous for a man such as Charles Richet with
literary and bibliographic interests were his connections to French
publishers.
As early as 1881, Richet was approached by Felix Alcan and Armand
Ballière (who had published his article on somnambulism in one
of their journals), to edit the Revue des cours scientifiques. Since 1867 they had published this journal along with its parallel the Revue des cours politiques et litteraires,
and now Ballière wanted to separate them in order to turn the
publications into more general interest journals for the public. The
result was the Revue bleu for politics and literature and the Revue rose, better known as the Revue scientifique,
which Richet was invited to edit.(26) He accepted, and in the next
twenty-five years made it into the most important journal of science in
France for the general public. In the process Richet's contacts and
influence grew quickly among publishers and scientists as well as the
public.
Another example of Richet's family connections to the publishing world
was the fact that his sister Louise married Charles Buloz, the
publisher of the Revue des deux mondes.
This, of course, gave Richet ready access to that journal for
publication of his articles on a variety of subjects, both scientific
and otherwise. Then one day in 1889 Buloz approached him with the
shocking news that he was bankrupt. On further questioning, Richet
discovered that Buloz had been placing advertisements in the Revue for
women to do translations and bibliographic research, but it had just
been a pretext for finding mistresses. Buloz succeeded only too well,
and one of the women had begun blackmailing him.(27) Scandal was
avoided only when Richet bought the Revue des deux mondes, after paying off Buloz's debts.
This analysis would be incomplete without at least mentioning one
feature it reveals about the larger context of late nineteenth century
and early twentieth century society. The prestige of science made the
general public take seriously (perhaps too seriously) almost any
scientist's opinion, especially if it was on a subject of broad
interest. This was the reason there was an audience for the science
columns of the Revue des deux mondes and a whole journal like the Revue scientifique, which gave Charles Richet access to the general public.
Despite occasional attacks, the trend has continued to the present day as witnessed by such TV programs as Nova, Carl Sagan's Cosmos
and a half dozen other print and broadcast series. The question
remains: do these popularizers of science occupy a middle ground
between the two cultures? They do, but there are still relatively few
scientists of great stature who have moved into an arena where their
ideas have become accessible to other intellectuals as well as the
general public. As the case of Richet demonstrates, however, scientists
have been more eager to step into this middle ground than serious
literary or philosophical thinkers. Until we see more well known
philosophers or literary figures not only step into the popular
limelight but also comment on science, the communications between the
two cultures will continue to be largely in one direction.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to acknowledge the great help of two of Richet's grandson's,
Gabriel and Denis Richet, who made available some of the private papers
of Charles Richet for this and other research. I also thank Kenton
Kroker for is inspiration to publish this article.
NOTES
1. For studies of Carrel and Rostand, see André Juste, La vie et l'oeuvre de Jean Rostand (Paris: Stock, 1971), and Alain Drouard, Alexis Carrel (1873-1944) : de la mémoire à l'histoire
(Paris : L'Harmattan, 1995). On Einstein's early popularity in America,
see Marshall Missner, "Why Einstein became Famous in America," Social Studies of Science, 15 (1985), 267-91. On Thomas, there is one biography, Andrew J. Angyal, Lewis Thomas (Boston: Twayne, 1989), but for a broader view of Medawar, see a videotape production for the Discovery series, The hope of progress (1989). Both also have left autobiographical accounts.
There are also a larger number of medical men by training who have
achieved notoriety in other fields. Perhaps the most obvious examples
have been the medical men of letters. The success of Michael Crichton
notwithstanding, a more classic case can be found in The last physician : Walker Percy and the moral life of medicine,eds.
Carl Elliott and John Lantos., (Durham, NC : Duke University Press,
1999). For English examples, see David Waldron Smithers, This Idle Trade : On Doctors Who Were Writers
(Tunbridge Wells, Kent : Dragonfly Press, 1989). In France, the best
documented studies have been on doctors in politics. Here, for example,
a man like Clemenceau who was trained in medicine represents only the
tip of the iceberg, since of all deputies in the French Chamber from
1898 to 1940, 11% had medical training. See Mattei Dogan, "Les
filières de la carrière politique en France," Revue française de sociologie, 8 (1967), 478; and Jack D. Ellis, The physician Legislators of France: medicine and politics in the early Third Republic, 1870-1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
2. For a recent biography of Richet, see S. Wolf, Brain, Mind and Medicine: Charles Richet and the Origins of Physiological PsychologyDictionary of Scientific Biography (DSB), the obituaries mentioned below, and the medical thesis by Marilisa Juri, Charles Richet Physiologiste, 1850-1935 (Zurich: Juris Druck, 1965). Kenton Kroker, "Immunity and Its Other: The Anaphylactic Selves of Charles Richet," Studies in the Phiosophy of Biology and the Biomedial Sciences,
30 (1999), 273-96 has proposed an explanation of Richet's discovery of
anaphylaxis based on his broader social and political views.
3. The obituaries of Richet invariably referred to his breadth of
interests as being "encyclopedic," the product of a "universal
curiosity. Roger, 2045; M. Achard, "Deces de M. Charles Richet," Comptes rendus de la Société de biologie, 120 (1935), 927; André Mayer, "Notice nécrologique sur M. Charles Richet (1850-1935)," Bulletin de l'Academie de médicine,
115 (1936), 53. Gustave Roussy, Secretary-General of the Academy of
Medicine, chose Richet as the subject of his annual elegy in 1945, and
compared him to such Renaissance men as Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus and
Vesalius, because of, "the diversity of the fields where his
intelligence satisfied itself." Gustave Roussy, "Charles Richet
(1850-1935)," Bulletin de l'Academie de médicine, 129
(1945), 720. Roussy was not just referring to Richet's scientific work,
since half of the elegy was devoted to the physiologist's literary and
philosophical writings. André Meyer's 1935 obituary concluded
with a long quote from Diderot's Encyclopédie entry for "Genius", a term he thought particularly appropriate for Richet. Mayer, 64.
4. Le Peuple, 5 December 1935.
5. "Charles Richet," DSB, p. 428.
6. Richet was very defensive about the failure, alleging it to be like
having malaria suffers take only 1/10 the dose of quinine and
concluding it was not the cure. Charles Richet, "Autobiographie," in Biographies médicales,
ed. by P. Busquet and Maurice Genty (Ballière, 1939) 5:178; and
Richet, "Memoires sur moi et les autres"(unpublished manuscript kindly
furnished by his grandsons, Gabriel and Denis), Ch. 6, pp. 8-16.
7. Charles Richet, Souvenirs d'un physiologiste (Paris: J. Peyronnet, 1933), pp. 147-50; "Du somnabulisme provoqué," Journal de l'anatomie et de la physiologie normales et pathologiques de l'homme et des animaux, 11 (1875), 348-78.
8. Souvenirs, pp. 152-53.
9. Roussy, 730; Henri Roger, "Charles Richet," Presse médicale, 43 (1935), 2044.
10. Souvenirs, p. 139.
11. Comptes rendus des seances de l'Academie des Sciences,
102 (1886), 1302, 1415,143; 104 (1887), 1385, 1415; 118 (1894), 1131,
1127, 1137; 132 (1901), 1197, 1212; 154 (1912), 325, 627, 680; 158
(1914), 150, 166-67, 217.)
12. "Memoirs", Ch IV, p. 88; also Souvenirs, pp. 42-45.)
13. "Memoirs", Ch IV, pp. 93-94. Frank B. Rogers, ""Index Medicus" in the Twentieth Century," in Centenary of Index Medicus,
ed. by John B. Blake (Bethesda: U. S. Dept. of Health and Human
Services, 1980), 53. The American Index Catalogue never had more than
500 subscribers of which the army accounted for 1/5. Richet only had
200 subscribers of which Henri de Rothschild purchased 1/3.
14. "Memoirs", Ch VI, pp. 58-59.
15. Souvenirs, pp. 68-69. In the process, he discovered one
unexpected advantage of the drug when his brother-in-law and Dean of
the medical faculty, Louis Landouzy prescribed chloralose for a patient
who was the wife of an important politician apparently suffering from
insomnia. The woman proceeded to use it in a suicide attempt by taking
an overdose of twenty times the normal prescribed amount. Rather than
cause a scandal, the attempt failed, and after 48 hours of a deep sleep
she awoke without any harmful aftereffects.
16. "Richet", DSB, 427.
17. "Memoirs", Ch. VI, pp. 16-18.
18. Charles Richet, "Accroisement de la population française," Revue des deux mondes, ser. 3, 50(1882), 900-32; 51 (1882), 587-616.
19. Ibid., 610.
20. Charles Richet, Sélection humaine (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1919), p. 15.
21. Charles Richet, Le passé de la guerre et l'avenir de la Paix (Paris: Ollendorff, 1907), pp. 6-7, as cited in Juri, pp. 33-34.
22. For a good summary, see Juri, pp. 33-36.
23. "Memoirs", Ch. VII, p. 22; 24.
24. "Memoirs", Ch. VII, pp. 42-58; Souvenirs, pp. 117-19.
25. Souvenirs, pp. 65-68.
26. "Memoirs", Ch. II, pp. 86-87; Souvenirs, pp. 50-53.
27. "Memoirs", Ch V, pp. 33-43.
(New Brunswick: Transaction, 1993). In addition, see the entry for Richet in