¹ Rich, A. R., ‘The place of R. J. H. Dutrochet in the development of the cell theory’, Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1926, 39, 330–65.Google Scholar

² The relationship between Dutrochet and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire is worth further study. Dutrochet's writings include limited support for the philosophical anatomy of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who in turn was a notable opponent of the vitalism of the Bichat school. The date of their friendship is therefore relevant. Dr Schiller suggests (p. 14) that we must abandon the obvious interpretation of most of the evidence—that the disagreement at the Académie which led to their friendship occurred in 1818—because it preceded Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's support for Dutrochet's candidature at the Académie, and Dutrochet's name was on a list of candidates submitted by Lacépède on 17 November 1817. True, but on this occasion Dutrochet was placed well down the list of candidates. On 22 February 1819 a new list was presented for a vacancy in zoology, and Dutrochet was elected. It seems to me quite reasonable to suppose that it was this later submission to which Dutrochet referred in his autobiographical sketch (p. 82), in which case the evidence for 1818 or early 1819 is strengthened.

Another minor, but significant, question of date arises over the letter to Cuvier about endosmosis printed on pp. 201–2 and there dated ‘24 Octobre 1826’. This date would place it before Dutrochet's announcement of endosmosis to the Académie, and such a sequence seems very unlikely. According to my notes, the month on the manuscript appears to be ‘9 bre’ i.e. Novembre. The contents of the letter were read to the Académie on the 37 November 1826.

³ Dutrochet, H., ‘Examples of the reunion of parts totally separated from the rest of the body’, Plastic and reconstructive surgery, 1969, 44, 288–9Google Scholar, translated and reprinted from Gazette de santé, No 9, 21 03 1817.Google Scholar

⁴ This difference is the effect of repetition was one which Maine de Biran had stressed in his attempt to separate passive and active faculties. See his Influence de l'habitude sur la faculté de penser, Paris, 1803.Google Scholar

⁵ Useful bibliographies for the culture of early nineteenth century France are given in, de Sauvigny, G. de Bertier, La restauration, 2nd edn., Paris, 1955Google Scholar, and Droz, J., Europe between revolutions, 1815–1848, London, 1967.Google ScholarFox, Robert, ‘Scientific enterprise and the patronage of research in France, 1800–1870’, Minerva, 1973, 11, 442–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, contains much on scientific culture. Also see Gouhier, Henri, La jeunesse d'Auguste Comte et la formation du positivisme, 3 vols., Paris, 1933–1941Google Scholar; Boas, G., French philosophies of the romantic period, New York, 1964Google Scholar; Granges, Ch.-M. Des, La presse littéraire sous la restauration, 1815–1830, Paris, 1907Google Scholar; Bagge, D., Les idées politiques en France sous la restauration, Paris, 1952Google Scholar; Bréhier, E., Histoire de la philosophie, ii. fase. 3Google Scholar: le XIX^e siècle, Paris, 1932Google Scholar; the considerable literature on Stendhal constitutes a useful source for ‘background’.

⁶ The lives and works of the scientists and naturalists grouped around the Muséum can be explored in a number of biographical studies including Coleman, William, Georges Cuvier, zoologist, Cambridge, Mass., 1964CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nicard, P., Étude sur la vie et les travaux de M. Ducrotay de Blainville, Paris, 1890Google Scholar; de Launey, Louis, Les Brongniart, Paris, 1940Google Scholar; Legée, G., ‘Cuvier (1769–1832), Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844) et Flourens (1794–1867)’. Histoire et biologie, 1969, fase. 2, pp. 10–34Google Scholar; Cahn, Théophile, La vie et l'oeuvre de Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Paris, 1962Google Scholar; Olmsted, J. M. D., Francois Magendie, New York, 1944Google Scholar; Schiller, J., Claude Bernard et les problèmes scientifiques de son temps, Paris, 1967.Google Scholar

The conceptual structures of early nineteenth-century biology are under investigation in several places, partly as a result of the work of Georges Canguilhem and Michel Foucault. See for example, Revue d'histoire des sciences, 1970, 23, and 1972, 25Google Scholar, for articles and discussions on Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire respectively. Albury, William R.'s ‘Physiological explanation in Magendie's manifesto of 1809’, Bulletin of the history of medicine, 1974, 48, 90–9Google ScholarPubMed, provides a foretaste of scholarship to come from Albury and also from Michael Gross of Princeton. Karl Figlio's recent paper ‘The metaphor of organisation’, History of science, 1976, 14, 17–53Google Scholar, points a way towards an integration of the content of science with its social context.

Useful, more or less contemporary, accounts of life sciences include, Cuvier, George, Rapport historique sur les progrès des sciences naturelles depuis 1789, et sur leur état actuel, Paris, 1810Google Scholar; [Royer-Collard, Hippolyte]. ‘De l'état actuel de la physiologie’, Revue française, 1828, 3, 28–66Google Scholar; [de Candolle, A. P.], ‘De l'état actuel de la botanique générale’, Revue française, 1829, 8, 33–56Google Scholar; Edwards, Henri Milne, Rapport sur les progres des sciences zoologiques, Paris, 1867.Google Scholar

⁷ On biologie in France see Georges Canguilhem's essays on Bichat, Comte, cells and physiology in Études d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences, Paris, 1970Google Scholar, and La connaissance de la vie, Paris, 1969Google Scholar; Pickstone, J. V., ‘Globules and coagula: concepts of tissue formation in the early nineteenth century’, Journal of the history of medicine, 1973, 28, 336–56Google ScholarPubMed, and ‘Vital actions and organic physics: Henri Dutrochet and French physiology during the 18203’, Bulletin of the history of medicine, 1976, 50, 191–212Google Scholar; Royer-Collard, Hippolyte, Essai d'un système général de zoonomie, (thèse doctorale), Paris, 1828Google Scholar, and ‘Considérations sur le développement du foetus humain’, Revue française, 1828, 5, 77–119.Google Scholar

⁸ See, for example, Leroux, Pierre, Réfutation de l'éclectisme, Paris, 1839.Google Scholar Leroux attacked the notion that philosophy was a specialism for a class of érudits. It was, he maintained, la science de la vie, which must follow the current of humanity. See also note 24 below.

⁹ Edwards, W. F., ‘La liaison du règne végétal et du règne animal’, Bulletin des sciences naturelles, 1826, 8, 188–9Google Scholar; also see Le globe, 11 05 1826Google Scholar, and 18 Mai 1826.

¹⁰ See my ‘Globules and coagula’, op. cit. (7).

¹¹ See Guédés, M., ‘La théorie de la metamorphose en morphologie végétale; A. P. de Candolle et P. J. F. Turpin’, Revue d'histoire des sciences, 1972, 25, 253–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² See, for example, the rich article by Bourdier, Frank, ‘Le prophète Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, George Sand et les Saint-Simoniens’, Histoire et nature, 1973, 1, 47–66.Google Scholar

¹³ See Fox, , op. cit. (5).Google Scholar

¹⁴ See, for example, Pagel, Walter, ‘The speculative basis of modern pathology’, Bulletin of the history of medicine, 1945, 18Google Scholar; Maulitz, Russel, ‘Schwann's way: cells and crystals’, Journal of the history of medicine, 1971, 26, 422–37Google ScholarPubMed; Hoppe, Brigitte, ‘Discussions histologiques et physicochimiques au commencement de la cytologie au xixe siècle’, Actes, xiie congrès internationale d'histoire des sciences, Paris, 1971, viii. 73–83.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Coste, P., Éloge de du Trochet, Paris, 1866.Google Scholar The letters and autobiography are reproduced in the volume under review.

¹⁶ These points are elaborated in my ‘Vital actions and organic physics’, op. cit. (7).

¹⁷ The notes, discussed briefly in my ‘The origins of general physiology in France, with special emphasis on the work of R. J. H. Dutrochet’, University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1973, provide further evidence for the close links between Dutrochet's work on the sensitive plant and contemporary work on animal nervous systems.

¹⁸ Maine de Biran, , Oeuvres (ed. by Tisserand, Pierre), Paris, 1920–, ii. 20.Google Scholar

¹⁹ For detailed discussion of Maine de Biran's significance as the point of departure of much of nineteenth-century French thought from the tradition of the Idéologues, see his Oeuvres, op. cit. (18)Google Scholar; also Bréhier, , op. cit. (5)Google Scholar; and the recent study by Lacroze, Réné, Maine de Biran, Paris, 1970.Google Scholar

²⁰ Dutrochet, R. J. H., Recherches anatomiques et physiologiques sur la structure intime des animaux et des végétaux, et sur leur motilité, Paris, 1824.Google Scholar

²¹ Cuvier, , op. cit. (6)Google Scholar; de Candolle, A. P., ‘Expériences relatives à l'influence de la lumiére sur quelques végétaux’, in Mémoires presentés à l'Institut des sciences, lettres et arts, Paris, 1806, i. 329–50Google Scholar, and Physiologie végétale, 1832, i. 29–34Google Scholar; for Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, see the interesting letter to him from Dutrochet (7 December 1821), on pp. 188–9 of the volume under review; Dhéré, Charles, De la nutrition, après les idées de Ducrotay de Blainville, Paris, 1826, p. 12.Google Scholar

²² Magendie, F., ‘Quelques idées générales sur les phénomènes particuliers aux êtres vivants’, Bulletin des sciences médicales de la Société Médicale d'Emulation, Paris, 1809, 4, 145–70.Google ScholarFoster, Michael, ‘Physiology’, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edn., Chicago, 1885, xix. 22.Google Scholar

²³ For biographical notes on Hippolyte-Louis Royer-Collard (1802–1850), see the entry in the Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales. The Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes by Barbier, Ant.-Alex., 3rd edn., Paris, 1879, iv.Google Scholar gives him as the author of the physiology articles in volumes 1–15 of the Revue française. The content and sympathies of those articles make it likely that he was also the author of the article on Dutrochet which appeared in volume 16. In this connexion it is of interest that Dutrochet was recommended for the Legion of Honour in a letter written to Cuvier from the Ministry of Commerce on 16 January 1831 and signed Royer-Collard. Presumably this was Pierre-Paul, the statesman, but Hippolyte-Louis, had, in 1830Google Scholar, been appointed Director of the Section of Letters and Sciences of the Ministry of the Interior. In any case, it would seem likely that both uncle and nephew were involved in the proposal.

²⁴ There is a considerable literature on the Cuvier-Geoffroy dispute; see the works cited in (6) above.

Some suggestion of the close relationship between the life sciences and the study of society— the common problems of method, and thus the political sensitivity of the life sciences—can be gleaned by reading the discussions of historical method in Guizot, 's History of civilisation, (ed. by Hazlitt, W.), London, 1856Google Scholar, especially i. 291, where the method of science, (analysis from without of social states) is contrasted with the primitive method of synthesis, following the internal and moral chronology, the order in which facts succeed one another and reciprocally create each other.

²⁵ See the reviews of Dutrochet, 's Recherches (1824)Google Scholar by Desmoulins, , Journal complémentaire, 1824, 18, 263–73Google Scholar; 1824, 19, 46–54; and by Auguste Sainte-Hilaire, , Bulletin des sciences naturelles, 1824, 17, 191–4Google Scholar; for Magendie's opinion see his Précis élémentaire de physiologie, 3rd edn., Paris, 1836, i. 4Google Scholar; for Brongniart's, which probably also represented that of his brothers-in-law, see his ‘Notice sur Henri Dutrochet’, Mémoires d'agriculture, d'économie rurale et domestique, Paris, 1853, pp. 421–42.Google Scholar

²⁶ Discussed in my ‘Globules and coagula’, op. cit. (7).

²⁷ See pp. 94, 142, of the volume under review; also Dutrochet, R. J. H., Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire anatomique et physiologiques des végétaux et des animaux, 2 vols., Paris, 1837, ii. 198.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., ii. 383.

²⁹ Virchow, R., Cellular pathology (reprinted with introductory essay by L. J. Rather), New York, 1971.Google Scholar

³⁰ Dutrochet, , op. cit. (27), i.Google Scholar

³¹ Richerand, Anthelme, Nouveaux élémens de physiologie, 10th edn., 3 vols., Paris, 1833–1835, i. ‘Préface’.Google Scholar

³² See my ‘Vital actions and organic physics’, op. cit. (7).

³³ Brücke, Ernst, De diffusione humorum per septa mortua et viva, Berlin, 1842, p. 43Google Scholar; for a recent review of the background of this thesis see Galaty, David, ‘The philosophical basis of mid-nineteenth century German reductionism’, Journal of the history of medicine, 1974, 29, 295–316.Google ScholarPubMed