Classrooms, Salons, Academies, and Courts: Mateu Orfila (1787–1853) and Nineteenth-Century French...

Classrooms, Salons, Academies, andCourts: Mateu Orfila (1787–1853) andNineteenth-Century French ToxicologyJosé Ramón Bertomeu-SánchezInstitut d’Història de la Medicina i de la Ciència López Piñero, Universitatde València-CSIC, Spain

This paper analyses the connections between nineteenth-century courtrooms,academies, and laboratories by focusing on the life and works of Mateu Orfila(1787–1853), one of the most famous nineteenth-century toxicologists. At theapex of his career, Orfila moved regularly between his laboratory and hischair at the Paris Faculty of Medicine to meetings of the Academy of Medicine,and the courtrooms in which he was frequently called upon as an expertwitness in murder trials. Tracing Orfila’s biographical path, this paper dealswith four main sites of nineteenth-century toxicology: classrooms, salons, aca-demies, and courtrooms. These sites are understood as both tangible places,whose material features shaped the activities taking place inside, and socialand cultural constructs, which constrained, enabled, or encouraged particularpractices concerning medicine, science, and law. I pay attention to theirlocation and physical shape, the explicit or implicit rules concerning accessand exclusion, and the roles their different inhabitants were expected toplay. Finally, I discuss how Orfila’s movements contributed to the circulationof data, objects, concepts, epistemic values, and experimental practicesfrom one site to another, which produced some hybridisation of courtroomsand laboratories, classrooms and academy halls. I claim that a biographicalapproach provides a privileged perspective from which to discuss how phys-ical environment constrains scientific practice, while enlarging our ‘map’with new spaces and resources for studying the circulation of historicalactors, ideas, practices, and material culture at different scales of analysis.

Mateu Orfila (1787–1853) was a great nineteenth-century medical celebritywhose work is usually recognised as a landmark in the history of toxicology.Born in Mahon (Spain), he was among the first generation of students trained

ambix, Vol. 61 No. 2, May, 2014, 162–186

© Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 2014 DOI 10.1179/0002698014Z.00000000051

at the new Paris Faculty of Medicine which emerged after the French Revolution.While still a medical student, Orfila gave public courses which were attended by asubstantial number of students. The success of his lectures encouraged him towrite his Elemens de chimie médicale which became one of the most popularchemistry textbooks during the first half of the nineteenth century. Thanks tohis popularity and the support of his social network, Orfila was appointedprofessor of legal medicine at the Paris Faculty of Medicine and became one ofthe founding members of the Paris Academy of Medicine and of the Société deChimie Médicale. He was also a member of the first editorial board of Annalesd’hygiène publique et de médecine légale, one of the most influential nineteenth-century medical journals.The Parisian salon was another important venue in the life of Orfila, whose

remarkable gifts as a singer were greatly appreciated. In the salons, he met manyphysicians and politicians whose support and influence would prove decisive inhis successful career, which culminated with his appointment as dean of theFaculty of Medicine during the Orleanist monarchy, a post he held from 1831 to1848. Following a common French pattern, he ‘cumulated’ many other positionsand became a member of numerous institutions related to science and medicine,such as the Royal Council of Public Instruction and the General Council ofParis Hospitals. He also participated in various special commissions dealing withthe reform of medical studies. Orfila’s celebrity stemmed from his work as a forensicphysician. His most famous trials took place in the late 1830s, during a period whichwas perceived as suffering from an epidemic of poisoning crimes. Many of his expertreports were published in medical journals, discussed in the Academies, andpresented in his lectures at the Paris Faculty of Medicine, which were sometimesattended by a large general audience, which was also avidly interested in thegrowing popular literature on poisoning crimes published in newspapers and legaljournals.1

At the height of his career, Orfila habitually moved from his laboratory and histeaching chair in the Faculty of Medicine to meetings of the various consultativebodies to which he belonged, to regular sessions of the Paris Academy of Medicine,and to courtrooms, where he was frequently required as a forensic expert. In tracingOrfila’s footsteps, one therefore needs to cross many institutional and disciplinaryboundaries, sojourning in different academic, legal, and scientific spaces. Orfila’sambiguous position, moving back and forth between a variety of medical, social,and legal sites, provides a good opportunity for exploring further the overlappingsites of chemistry, medicine, and law in nineteenth-century France. The hybrid

1 OnOrfila, see José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez and Agustí Nieto-Galan, eds.,Chemistry, Medicine, and Crime: MateuJ. B. Orfila (1787–1853) and His Times (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2006) which offers areview of the biographical literature. His autobiography and letters have been published in José R. Bertomeu-Sánchezand Josep M. Vidal-Hernàndez, eds., Mateu Orfila (1787–1853). Autobiografia i correspondència (Menorca: IEM,2011).

CLASSROOMS, SALONS, ACADEMIES, AND COURTS 163

nature of these spaces renders problematic many categories that are frequently takenfor granted: legal vs. scientific, medicine vs. science, teaching vs. research.2

Tracing Orfila’s biographical path, this paper deals with four main spaces innineteenth-century Paris: classrooms (both official and private courses), salons, aca-demies, and courts. In the following sections, these sites are understood as both tan-gible places, whose material features shaped the activities taking place within, andsocial and cultural constructs, which constrained, enabled, or encouraged particularpractices concerning medicine, science, and law. Therefore, I pay attention to thelocation and physical shape, the explicit or implicit rules concerning access andexclusion, and the expected role played by their different inhabitants. Finally, atthe end of the paper, I shall discuss how Orfila’s movements contributed to the cir-culation of material, social, and cultural items from one site to another, which pro-duced some hybridisation of courtrooms and laboratories, classrooms and academichalls. His multiple activities encouraged exchanges between the different sites ofnineteenth-century toxicology. By studying several examples, I shall show howthese exchanges were largely shaped by both the social and material features ofthe different sites and the striking inequalities in political and academic power ofthose who inhabited them.3

I claim that a biographical approach provides a privileged perspective from whichto discuss how physical environment constrains scientific practice, while enlargingour ‘map’ with new spaces and resources for studying the circulation of historicalactors, ideas, practices, and material culture at different scales of analysis. In thissense, Orfila’s biography sheds new light on some of the most famous Parismedical and scientific institutions, while bringing to the fore some lesser studiedsites (salons, private courses, courtrooms), which nonetheless, as the growing litera-ture on science in the public sphere shows, played a major role in the development ofchemistry and medicine during the nineteenth century.4

2 David N. Livingstone, “Landscapes of Knowledge,” in Geographies of Science, ed. Peter Meusburger, DavidN. Livingstone, and Heike Jöns (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), 3–23, on 6.

3 See Steven Shapin, “The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England,” Isis 79 (1988): 373–404. I followthe more recent work by Livingstone, Withers and many other “geographers of science.” See David Livingstone,Putting Science in its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago: University Press, 2003); David Living-stone and Charles Withers, eds., Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science (Chicago: University Press, 2011).For reviews of the literature, see Diarmid A. Finnegan, “The Spatial Turn: Geographical Approaches in theHistory of Science,” Journal of the History of Biology 41 (2008): 369–88; Charles W. Withers, “Place and the‘Spatial Turn’ in Geography and in History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 70 (2009): 637–58. On tradingzones see Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (Chicago: Chicago UniversityPress, 1997) and Yoshiyuchi Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry. The Lab as ContactZone (New York: Palgrave, 2013).

4 Rephrasing here some of the arguments defended by Thomas L. Hankins, “In Defence of Biography: The Use of Bio-graphy in the History of Science,” History of Science 17 (1979): 1–16. For a more recent discussion, see ThomasSöderqvist, ed., The History and Poetics of Scientific Biography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). For a general and col-lective overview of scientific careers in nineteenth-century France, see Jean Dhombres and Nicole Dhombres, Nais-sance d’un nouveau pouvoir. Sciences et savants en France (1793–1824) (Paris: Payot, 1989); Charles C. Gillispie,Science and Polity in France: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Years (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,2004); Robert Fox, The Savant and the State. Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France (Baltimore,MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012). For a review of the literature on popular science, see Jonathan Topham,ed., “Focus: Historicizing Popular Science,” Isis 100 (2009): 310–19, and Agustí Nieto-Galan, Los públicos de laciencia: expertos y profanos a través de la historia (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2011).

164 JOSÉ RAMÓN BERTOMEU-SÁNCHEZ

Private lectures

Mateu Josep Bonaventura Orfila i Rotger was born in Mahon on the island ofMinorca in 1787. After studying in Valencia and Barcelona, he moved to Paris,thanks to the financial support given by a local institution (the Junta de Comerçde Barcelona). In so doing, he became part of the community of young Spanish stu-dents (the “pensionados”) who obtained grants in order to learn chemistry, medi-cine, and other sciences in France and other European countries. In 1808, Orfilastarted his first year at the Paris Faculty of Medicine and attended several coursesat the Museum of Natural History and the lectures on chemistry delivered by Louis-Jacques Thenard (1777–1857) at the Collège de France.5

Medical students attended not only lectures at these famous institutions, but alsoprivate lectures offered by a large number of physicians and pharmacists. Paris was abooming market for teachers, and Orfila very soon seized this opportunity todevelop a successful career. His first lectures took place in private laboratorieswhich were furnished by some of his wealthy friends. During the winter of 1807and 1808, at the same time as he registered as a student at the Faculty of Medicine,Orfila started his private courses in a laboratory equipped by Auguste-César Barrat(1790–1854), a law student who owned a private natural history cabinet and achemistry laboratory. Every day except for Sundays, from four to five in the after-noon, Orfila taught physics and chemistry to a ‘small but select’ group of students,and attempted to replicate the “main experiments which can be seen at the Collègede France” and other famous institutions.6 The access to laboratory resources andthe opportunity to perform his own experiments were as crucial as the potentialeconomic profit provided by private courses. However, in 1809, when the warbetween France and Spain deprived Orfila of his grant, he was urged to look fornew sources of income. He continued to deliver lectures to “around twenty stu-dents” three times a week during the summer of 1809. Although he chargednothing for the course, he gained popularity in the Parisian market for privatescience courses. In addition, he was able to work with many instruments and pro-ducts purchased by his friend, and thus to learn about a number of interestingissues that were “useful to medicine.”7

Between May and August 1811, he passed the required exams in order to obtainhis M.D. At the end of this year, he defended a medical thesis on the analysis of urineand started a new course on medical chemistry in the house of another friend (anapothecary named Martin) on the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs (located in whattoday is the space between the Louvre Museum and the Place des Victoires). Thecourse consisted of around one hundred sessions and was expected to be finished

5 See José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez and Antonio García-Belmar, “Mateu Orfila’s Eléments de chimie médicale andthe Debate about Chemistry Applied to Medicine during the Early XIXth Century in France,” Ambix 47 (2000):1–28; Antonio García-Belmar, “The Didactic Uses of Experiment: Louis-Jacques Thenard’s Lectures at the Collègede France,” in Bertomeu and Nieto-Galan, Chemistry, Medicine and Crime, 25–54.

6 See Bertomeu and Vidal, Mateu Orfila, 127–28.7 Letter to his father, Paris, 5 December 1809, in Bertomeu and Vidal, Mateu Orfila, 346–47.


by mid-May 1812. At the same time he was teaching another course on physics.Despite the considerable distance from the Faculty of Medicine, which was on theother bank of the Seine, he doubled the number of students, acquiring about fortyin all who each paid him forty francs. Thus, in total, he earned about 1,600francs, and assuming that the laboratory expenses were around 350 francs, hisfinal income would have been close to what he had received as a grant (1,500francs) when he first arrived in Paris.8 Such was the demand for courses that itbecame possible to earn substantial amounts of money from lecturing. In hisfamily letters, Orfila affirmed that he could not even dream of earning such anincome by visiting patients.9 During the summer of 1812, he moved to a new labora-tory closer to the Faculty of Medicine, where he continued to lecture on chemistryand other subjects, such as legal medicine, botany, and anatomy during the follow-ing years. In 1813, the number of students had grown to more than 150.10 However,not all of Orfila’s courses were so successful. He was compelled to cancel a course ontoxicology in 1814 when just four students registered.11 This failure is not men-tioned in his autobiography, in which he claimed that he could obtain between“eight and ten thousand francs” per year through his private lectures, which wasnot far from the salary he received when appointed professor at the Faculty of Medi-cine in 1819. If that figure is accurate, and the price of the courses was kept ataround 40 francs, that suggests that the number of registrations (perhaps not farfrom the number of students) was more than 300 per year.12

In letters to his family, Orfila proudly remarked on the success of his lectures,despite the highly competitive Parisian market for private courses on science.How “daring” was the “venture of teaching in Paris,” he confessed to his motherin 1812, a town “in which there are so many savants and so many courses on chem-istry and physics.”13 Many of these courses were strongly recommended in thedifferent guides published for students of medicine and pharmacy.14 We know thenames of some students of Orfila’s private courses who would become influentialdoctors and teachers at the Paris Faculty of Medicine: Pierre-Augustin Béclard(1785–1825), later Professor of Anatomy; and the brothers Hypolitte(1787–1843) and Jules Cloquet (1790–1883), who worked with Orfila on the pub-lication of several medical dictionaries. Another of Orfila’s students and friends wasWilliam-Frédéric Edwards (1777–1842), who obtained his medical degree from theParis Faculty in 1815, wrote on the new experimental physiology, and supported

8 The data on Orfila’s courses and their charges come from both his autobiography and his correspondence: Bertomeuand Vidal, Mateu Orfila, passim. On early nineteenth-century chemistry courses, see John Perkins, ed., “ChemistryCourses and the Construction of Chemistry, 1750–1830,”Ambix 57 (2010): 1–104.

9 Letter to his mother, 16 February 1812, in Bertomeu and Vidal, Mateu Orfila, 353.10 Bertomeu and Vidal, Mateu Orfila, 135 and 376 (Orfila’s letter to the Junta de Comerç de Barcelona, 29 November

1814).11 Frédéric Roux, Notice biographique sur Samuel Baup (Schaffousse: Brodtmann, 1862), 7.12 Bertomeu and Vidal, Mateu Orfila, 230. The figures were calculated assuming that the laboratory expenses were

similar to those of his first courses.13 Cf. Bertomeu and Vidal, Mateu Orfila, 354.14 Bertomeu and García-Belmar “Mateu Orfila’s Eléments de chimie médicale,” 5–6.


Orfila’s research on toxicology. Other famous students of Orfila were the hygienistsAlexander-Jean-Baptiste Parent-Duchâtelet (1790–1835) and Charles Pavet deCourteille (1826–1908). Orfila also mentioned in his autobiography a youngduchess who attended his lectures and became his patient, and AlexandreRaguet-Lepine (1789–1851), a law student who became a member of the Frenchparliament during the reign of Louis-Philippe. Although there is no more specificinformation about this group of Parisian notables who attended Orfila’s lectures,these examples hint at their role in the development of Orfila’s career, besides pro-viding sources of income and laboratory facilities. Other students were foreignerswho frequented many other courses on science and medicine in Paris. In 1809,more than a third of his twenty students were foreigners, “five or six” from Spainand two from England.15 Another British student was the surgeon John Cross(1790–1850), who visited Paris during the winter of 1814 and 1815. Back inLondon, he wrote a full report of the courses that he attended, including this briefdescription of Orfila’s lectures:

[Orfila] employed some hundreds of dogs during the last winter [1814–1815], for exhi-biting the effects of poisons, which he injects into the stomach, through an opening madein the oesophagus; and afterwards, when the poison begins to show its effects, he injectsthe antidote to counteract them, and save the animal.16

Other sources confirm that Orfila used chemical demonstration and animal exper-iments extensively in his private courses. In his autobiography he records a crucialepisode which took place in 1813, when he was lecturing on the chemical testsfor arsenic. He employed different reagents for making the characteristic colouredsolutions and precipitates which could be employed to detect arsenic. In order toshow that these reactions were unaffected by the presence of organic matter, hetook a cup of coffee and poured it into the arsenical solution, but, surprisingly, hecould not obtain the expected coloured precipitates. He started new series of exper-iments in order to deal with the causes of deceptive results in toxicological analy-sis.17 As this episode shows, Orfila’s lectures were not only a source of incomebut also of unforeseen results which could offer a starting point for future research.Moreover, his first courses in private houses also provided him with access to influ-ential social networks and laboratory resources for learning, teaching, and research.It was in one of these private laboratories, kindly furnished by a “student andfriend” in his house at Villeneuve-le-Roy, that Orfila performed the crucial animalexperiments and chemical tests which became the basis of his famous Traité des

15 Letter to his father, Paris, 5 December 1809. The other students are mentioned by Orfila in his autobiography. SeeBertomeu and Vidal,Mateu Orfila, 136–38, 140, 229–31 and 346–47 (letter). For more details of foreign students inParis, see Antonio García-Belmar and José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez, “Constructing the Centre from the Periphery:Spanish Travellers to France at the Time of the Chemical Revolution,” in Travels of Learning: A Geography ofScience in Europe, ed. Ana Simões, Ana Carneiro, andMaria Paula Diogo (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,2003), 143–88; and JohnWarner, Against the Spirit of System: The French Impulse in Nineteenth-Century AmericanMedicine (Princeton, NJ: University Press, 1998).

16 John Cross, Sketches of the Medical Schools of Paris (London: Callow, 1815), 55–56.17 Bertomeu and Vidal, Mateu Orfila, 136.


poisons, published the following year and preceded by a very positive report by acommittee of the Academy of Science. With many French editions and translationsinto the main European languages, the book became one of the most influentialnineteenth-century reference works on toxicology.18

Salons

The private rooms provided by friends and students were the site of the first lecturesgiven by Orfila and his early research on toxicology. These private spaces were alsocrucial for developing the social network which proved to be so important in hisscientific career. During the first years of the French Restoration, Orfila’s famegrew not only as a brilliant science teacher but also as a talented singer in the Par-isian salons. The young physician had a remarkable voice, and it was even saidthat “offers have been made to him to exchange the amphitheatre and the lectureroom for the boards of the opera.”19 Indeed, he was a friend of Louis Barilli (ca.1767–1824), the director of the Italian Theatre in Paris, who invited him to jointhe company as “primo Buffo” with a salary of 25,000 francs per year. He receiveda similar offer in 1817, but Orfila decided to pursue his scientific career whileoccasionally singing with other friends in the Parisian salons.20 His fame as asinger persisted for many years, and not only in France. In 1840, the MedicalTimes reported that “no other chemist can approach M. Orfila in the sweetnesswith which he warbles a ballad. Toxicology and cavatinas are equally familiar tohim: he is equally successful in administering poisons and striking the guitar.”21

Orfila soon realised the extent to which fame and fortune depended on therelations de salon in the French Restoration. In 1814, while he was finishingthe first edition of his Traité des poisons, he attended the soirées organised bythe Princesse de Vaudémont “twice a week.” The Princess ran one of the mostpopular and influential Parisian salons, frequented by people from differentwalks of life, countries, and political parties, including physicians, artists, andwriters. She organised musical evenings at which Orfila was one of the regularperformers. In a letter addressed to his father in 1814, he wrote that the Princessput him “in touch with several physicians and other people who had been, andmight still be on occasion, enormously helpful.”22 Orfila also frequented thesalon of Madame Rumford, widow of Lavoisier, where he met “first classsavants, such as Laplace, Fourier, de Prony, etc.,” but also the famous writerMadame de Staël (1766–1817) and prominent politicians, such as the duke Elie

18 Mateu Orfila, Traité des poisons … (Paris: Crochard, 1814–1815), 2 vols.19 The comment is by the American physician Peter Solomon Townsend in his 1828 diary. See George Rosen, “An

American Doctor in Paris in 1828: Selections from the Diary of Peter Solomon Townsend, M.D.,” Journal of theHistory of Medicine and Allied Sciences 6, no. 1 (1951): 64–115, on 81.

20 Bertomeu and Vidal, Mateu Orfila, 144.21 Medical Times 3 (1840–1841): 106.22 Bertomeu and Vidal, Mateu Orfila, 360. See Philip Mansel, Paris Between Empires: Monarchy and Revolution

1814–1852 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2003), 132–35.


Décazes (1780–1860) and Gabriel Delessert (1786–1858). During the 1820s, theOrfila family started its own salon at the rue Saint-Andrés-des-Arts, whichbecame very well known during the reign of Louis-Philippe, at the same timeas Orfila reached the pinnacle of his career as a public servant. Many famousmusicians and singers were invited to perform popular songs in his salon,which was also frequented by Parisian notables, bourgeois, and judges.23 Oneof the guests, the viscount Eduard Beaumont-Vassy (1816–1875), while praisingOrfila’s “superb bass voice,” later recalled one of his most wonderful musicalexperiences in Parisian salons: the “charlatan’s aria” from Le Philtre, an operain two acts which was premiered in June 1831. This musical passage introducedDoctor Fontanarose, a travelling vendor of patent medicines. Seeing and hearingthe dean of the Paris Faculty of Medicine turned into a quack who sold lovepotions was surely a hilarious experience for Orfila’s guests!24

In the salons, Orfila met many physicians and politicians whose support and influ-ence would prove decisive in his future career as a toxicologist. He even told one ofhis colleagues at the Faculty of Medicine that he had “obtained more advantageousdecisions for the Faculty” and “succeeded in more projects relative to research insalons than in the proceedings of commissions and in government offices.”25 Hewas probably referring to private conversations with politicians such as Abel-François Villemain (1790–1870) and François Guizot (1787–1874), who becameministers of education during Orfila’s tenure as dean of the Faculty of Medicinebetween 1831 and 1848.26

Unfortunately, these crucial conversations are elusive and rarely to be found in thehistorical record, but there are exceptions. During one musical soirée at the Princessede Vaudémont’s salon, Orfila met count Louis-Mathieu Molé, one of Louis XVIII’sministers, whose support contributed decisively to the editorial success of one of hisfirst books on poisons and antidotes. On Molé’s favourable report, the Minister ofthe Interior agreed to buy 250 copies of Orfila’s book to be “sent to the Prefects inorder to be placed in libraries or to be distributed to the principal physicians or sur-geons,” giving orders that the book had to be “strongly recommended to them, inorder to encourage the sales.” Unsurprisingly, the first edition soon went out ofprint and several more editions followed.27

23 Comtesse de Bassanville, Les Salons d’Autrefois, vol. 4 (Paris: Brunet, 1862–1866), 155–236; Anne-Martin Fugier,La vie élégante ou la formation de Tout-Paris, 1815–1848 (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 127 and 315–17. See alsoWellcomeLibrary, London, WMS. 7375/4: Orfila letter to Jacques-François Gallay (1795–1864), June 1820.

24 Edouard-Ferdinand Beaumont-Vassy, Les salons de Paris et la société parisienne sous Louis-Philippe (Paris: Sartor-ius, 1866), 322–23. Daniel Aubert and Eugène Scribe, Le philtre: Opéra en deux actes (Paris: Bezou, 1831), 5. DoctorFontanarose offers his potion with the following words: “Prenez, prenez mon élixir! Il peut tout guérir: La paralysie etl’apoplexie, et la pleurésie et tous les tourments jusqu’à la folie, la mélancolie, et la jalousie, et le mal de dents.” Thislibretto inspired one of the most famous operas by Gaetano Donizetti, L’elisir d’amore.

25 Pierre H. Bérard, Eloge d’Orfila prononcé dans la séance de rentrée de la Faculté de médecine (Paris: Labé, 1854), 50.See also Amédée Fayol, La vie et l’œuvre d’Orfila (Paris: Albin Michel, 1930), 130–43.

26 Bertomeu and Vidal, Mateu Orfila, 149.27 Paris, Archives Nationales, F8/161. Orfila also attempted to obtain similar support for his book on legal medicine

published in 1821. See also Wellcome Library, London, MS. 7375/235. More details are to be found in José


Nineteenth-century salons were places for enjoying good music, politicaldebates, scientific conversations, and, in some cases, experimental demon-strations.28 Jean Pierre Couerbe reported that he “spoke a lot” with Orfilaabout the issue of “normal arsenic” during “his artistic soirées” in 1838.29 Scan-dalous crimes and remarkable trials were fashionable topics in the Parisian salons.In February 1840, just a few weeks after Marie Lafarge was accused of poisoningher husband, the journals reported that various “rumours circulated for severaldays in the Parisian salons about these tragic events.”30 The defendant wasrelated to the Paris aristocracy and, before moving from Paris to Tulle with herunfortunate husband, she frequented Parisian salons, which explains the greatattention her trial attracted during 1840. On 14 September, just one day afterOrfila presented his report in court, the duchess de Dino noted that all conversa-tions in the salons were about the Lafarge affair: “Here, as everywhere, thereare quite contrasting views on this issue,” she wrote. A “war of salons” brokeout in the form of passionate discussions which took place between “lafargistes”and “anti-lafargistes,” to such an extent that the journal Le Siècle announced inSeptember 1840 that some invitations to salons included a warning: “We willnot talk about the trial of [Madame] Lafarge.”31 In November 1840, a Parisianpharmacist organised a soirée at which he explained in front of around twentypeople “all the experiments regarding arsenic poisoning,” reconstructing thechemical analysis performed by the experts during the Lafarge trial and supportingOrfila’s views on this issue.32 Apart from these experimental demonstrations,curious readers could peruse Orfila’s reports in medical journals or scrutinise thepages of the more popular legal journals (Gazette des Tribunaux, Le Droit),which included verbatim reports of the most famous poisoning trials. As aresult, Orfila’s fame grew thanks to a disparate range of activities: popular lecturer,talented singer, host of a popular salon, and expert in courts. Competent manage-ment of these roles was vital to the construction of his authority and credibilityamong the Parisian social elite.

27 ContinuedRamón Bertomeu-Sánchez, “Popularizing Controversial Science: A Popular Treatise on Poisons by Mateu Orfila,”Medical History 53 (2009): 351–78.

28 See James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation. The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship ofVestiges of Natural History of Creation (Chicago: University Press, 2000), 153–90; James A. Secord, “How ScientificConversation became Shop Talk,” in Science in the Marketplace, ed. Aileen Fyfe and Bernard Lightman (Chicago:University Press, 2007), 23–59. On salons and science in nineteenth-century France, see Dorinda Outram, “BeforeObjectivity: Wives, Patronage, and Cultural Reproduction in Early Nineteenth-century French Science,” inUneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789–1979, ed. Pnina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 19–30, and Theresa Levitt, The Shadow of Enlightenment:Optical and Political Transparency in France, 1789–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 57–65.

29 Gazette des Hôpitaux 12 (1839): 149. On “normal arsenic” see José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez, “Managing Uncer-tainty in the Academy and the Courtroom: Normal Arsenic and Nineteenth-Century Toxicology,” Isis 104, no. 2(2013): 197–225.

30 Gazette des Tribunaux, 7 February 1840.31 Fugier, La vie élégante, 170–71, and Bassanville, Les Salons d’Autrefois, vol. 3, 181–87.32 L’Esculape, 19 November 1840, 125–26.


Amphitheatres

With the help of his influential network, and relying on his popularity as a sciencelecturer and textbook writer, Orfila was able to develop a successful career withinthe French educational system. In 1817, he replaced Louis-Jacques Thenard ingiving chemistry courses at the Athénée de Paris and published his Elémens dechimie médicale aimed at “medical and pharmaceutical students” attendingprivate lectures on chemistry. Finally, at the beginning of 1819, Orfila was appointedprofessor of legal medicine at the Paris Faculty of Medicine, and began an ascendingcareer within this institution. After the dismissal of several professors for suspectedliberal views, in 1823 Orfila became professor of medical chemistry at the Faculty.His career culminated with his appointment as dean in 1831, a post he held until1848.33

According to the Faculty’s regulations, the course on chemistry and pharmacy wasto begin with the general principles of chemistry, followed by descriptions of sub-stances from the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, and concluding withthe relationship between chemistry and the art of pharmacy. In 1837, the courseon pharmacology was changed to “pharmacy and organic chemistry,” andJean-Baptiste-André Dumas (1800–1884) was appointed professor. A new labora-tory for organic chemistry was established under his direction. The other laboratoryremained under Orfila’s supervision and, besides preparing demonstrations for thelectures, was employed for chemical analyses requested by hospitals or courts.The laboratory, placed behind the experimental tables of the amphitheatre, was“relatively small” but, according to a visitor in 1850, provided “enough space”for Orfila to perform animal experiments and prepare the demonstrations for hislectures.34

As with many other successful nineteenth-century courses on chemistry, Orfila’slectures were based on his “warm, colourful” voice, skilful performance, and chemi-cal demonstrations.35 He also occasionally performed experiments on animals andpoisons in the amphitheatre. Before proceeding to the description of Orfila’s lecturesby his colleagues and students, let us start with a satirical description publishedaround 1840:

33 Paris, Archives Nationales, AJ 16/6357, Registre des procès-verbaux des séances de la Faculté, 1818–1822, 98. Fordetails about his role as dean see Paris, Archives Nationales, AJ16/6565; Bertomeu and Vidal,Mateu Orfila, 355. Onthe Athénée, see William A. Smeaton, “The Early Years of the Lycée and the Lycée des Arts,” Annals of Sciences 11(1955): 309–19; 349–55. For more biographical information, see the literature cited in note 2.

34 See Alois Kernbauer, Die ‘klinische Chemie’ im Jahre 1850 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002), 128, which provides a descrip-tion by Johan F. Heller (1813–1871) who visited Paris in September 1850. See also Henri Meding, Paris Médical.Enseignement et bibliographie de la médecine (Paris: Masson, 1855), 40–41. For more detail on chemistry lecturesand demonstrations at the Paris Medical Faculty, see Bertomeu and García-Belmar, “Mateu Orfila’s Eléments dechimie médicale.”

35 One of his first biographers, Léon Thoinot, insightfully summarised the main characteristics of Orfila’s lectures:warm, colourful parole, expressive gestures, and talent for experimental demonstration, Léon Thoinot, “Histoirede la chaire de médecine légale de Paris,” Annales d’hygiène publique et de médecine légale 4, no. 6 (1906):481–519, quoted on 493–94. On scientific performance, see Iwan Morus, ed., “Performing Science,” Isis 101, no.4 (2010): 775–828.


From 6 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon, M. Orfila may be seen at the Ecole deMédecine, with his coat off, his throat bare, his shirt sleeves turned up to the elbows,a white apron before him, his hair the sport of the winds, cutting, slashing, emptying,jugulating, broiling, boiling, frying, hurrying from one furnace to the other, stirringthe coals, overlooking the broth, and preparing nameless ragouts.36

The culinary images refer to Orfila’s analytical methods, in which corpses orinternal organs were boiled in order to extract the poisoning substance whichcould be detected by means of reagents. The caricature captures the importantrole of embodied practices and experimental demonstrations in Orfila’s lectures,which is also mentioned in other, more formal descriptions. One of his colleaguesand friends at the Faculty of Medicine, the professor Pierre Bérard, remarked that“for every proposition, he offered the experimental demonstration, because heknew that an experiment engraves a fact in the memory better than a simple oraldescription.” His colleague at the Academy of Medicine, Frédéric Dubois, praisedhis “well-modulated, sonorous and powerful” voice and the “clear, methodical,simple” order of the lectures, but also highlighted that Orfila “whenever possible,proved by experiments the facts” that he talked about.37 The experimental demon-strations were organised with the help of his laboratory assistants: Jean-PierreBarruel (1780–1838) and Octave Lesueur (d. 1860), Orfila’s brother-in-law. Bothcollaborated with Orfila on several publications on toxicology, and wrote jointexpert reports for poisoning trials. They were also in charge of the new course onchemical manipulations created in 1835, in which a select group of 120 studentsattended thirty practical sessions aimed at revising all relevant organic and inorganicpharmaceutical preparations.38

The importance of experimental demonstrations and the brilliant oral skills of thelecturer should not lead us to ignore another crucial ingredient of Orfila’s lectures:the blackboard. While also highlighting his “resounding voice” and “easy elocu-tion,” his colleague Bérard also remarked that Orfila, gifted with an excellentmemory, made extensive use of the blackboard when explaining chemical equiva-lents.39 Another report mentions that the blackboard was used to present quantitat-ive data about “chemical proportions” and to list the reagents in chemicaloperations, probably in a similar way to that expressed in early nineteenth-centurychemistry textbooks before the advent of Berzelian formulae and chemicalequations.40 The roles of blackboards in Orfila’s chemistry lectures are absent

36 Medical Times 3 (1840–1841): 106. The information was taken from the French journal Charivary.37 Frédéric Dubois, “Eloge d’Orfila,” Mémoires de l’Académie de Médecine 18 (1854): i–xxxiv, on xviii.38 Paris, Archives Nationales, AJ16, 6556, Règlement de 1835 concernant les manipulations chimiques. It was an early

example of “assistant-centred” pedagogy in chemistry. See Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in JapaneseChemistry and García-Belmar, “The Didactic Uses of Experiment.”

39 Pierre H. M. Bérard, Eloge d’Orfila… (Paris: Labé, 1854), 33–34.40 Anon., “Cours de la Faculté: Chimie. M. Orfila,” Gazette des Hôpitaux 1, no. 8 (18 November 1828), 31. On Ber-

zelian formulae, see Ursula Klein, “Berzelian Formulas as Paper Tools in Early Nineteenth-Century Chemistry,”Foundations of Chemistry 3 (2001): 7–32. For its introduction in France, see José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez andAntonio García-Belmar, “Atoms in French Chemistry Textbooks during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century:The Eléments de Chimie Médicale by Mateu Orfila (1787–1853),” Nuncius 19, no. 1 (2004): 78–119.


from descriptions offered by the students, who usually focused on other more salientfeatures concerning his oral performance, the methodical order, and the experimen-tal demonstrations. An American student remarked in 1829 that Orfila was “rathera young man, extremely handsome and graceful, […] a very animated lecturer”whospoke “with great rapidity.”41 Another witness, the doctor Charles-Jean-BaptisteComet (1796–1869), compared the clarity of Orfila’s lectures with Thenard’s “phi-losophical” method. He commented that Orfila did not include so many dramatic(and sometimes unintelligible) experiments, but captivated his audience by theclarity and order of his lectures.42 However, another student did highlight thelarge number of “illustrations” (experiments) in his lectures, especially whenOrfila dealt with toxicological issues, particularly with his own research on arsenic:

There was one thing which would strike any stranger on entering the theatre, namely, theimmense number of illustrations on the lecture-table—they were almost endless; but allordinary occasions were eclipsed when he came to his famous subject, Arsenic. Then thewhole front seemed to bristle with Marsh’s apparatus, from the original one to all itsmodifications, and the one which Orfila himself approved of; then every experimentshowing additional evidence in detecting or distinguishing proofs of poison wasalready finished before the lecture and exhibited. So, what with plates covered withspots true and false (antimony), precipitates, tabular views, and apparatus, it presentedan idea rather confusing, and the chaos was not much improved by a few dead dogs con-spicuous here and there poisoned on scientific principles.43

The critical remarks suggest that chemical demonstrations did not always serve to“engrave a fact in the memory” as some nineteenth-century professors thought.While some experimental demonstrations could provide visual supporting evidence,they could also become confusing for novice students who wanted to grasp the mainpoints of Orfila’s lectures, particularly when dealing with controversial topics suchas arsenic tests. The architecture of the classroom and the large number of studentsdid not help. Those students placed in the upper part, far away from the experimen-tal table, were unable to recognise the colour of the reagents and precipitates—crucial information in analytical chemistry and toxicology. Moreover, as a journalistremarked, the amphitheatre, which lacked a chimney, was often “full of variousmore or less harmful vapours” produced by the chemical operations.44

In 1829, an American student affirmed that Orfila was “the most popular lecturerat the School of Medicine,” and reported that a large number of students werewaiting for the opening of the classroom doors “half an hour previous to the

41“The Hospital of Surgeons of Paris,” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 3 (1831): 106–09, on 108. The anon-ymous student signed this description in Paris, on 29 December 1829.

42 Mateu Orfila, Leçons de chimie appliquée à la médecine pratique et à la médecine légale… (Bruxelles: Librairie méd-icale et scientifique, 1830), xj–xij. On Thenard’s lectures, see García-Belmar, “The Didactic Uses of Experiment,” andAntonio García-Belmar and José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez, “Louis-Jacques Thenard’s Chemistry Courses at theCollège de France, 1804–1835,” Ambix 57 (2010): 48–64. See also Sacha Tomic, “Le cadre matériel des cours dechimie dans l’enseignement supérieur à Paris au XIXè siècle,” Histoire de l’éducation 130 (2011): 57–83.

43 Joseph Ince, “A Student’s Sketch of Orfila,” The Pharmaceutical Journal 12 (1853): 551–52, on 552.44

“Cours de la Faculté,” 31.


commencement of the lecture.” When the doors were opened, “the crowd rush[ed]forward with all their might, overthrowing, and trampling down some, and squeez-ing the breath almost out of the body of the others.”45 An American doctor reportedin 1845 that, once the lecture started, students were “always orderly, evincing theirpreferences by their attendance or absence, and never by clamorous applause.”46

This had not always been the case, particularly in the turbulent days of political agi-tation and student riots during the 1830s, when Orfila was compelled to suspend hislectures for several days and, in one case, to run out and find a safe room with thehelp of his young colleague Armand Trousseau (1801–1867).47

The audience was so large that Orfila usually gave his lectures in the largeamphitheatre of the Faculty of Medicine, although sometimes “even this bigamphitheatre became insufficient; more than half of his audience was compelledto stand.”48 As with many other nineteenth-century lecture halls, the amphitheatrewas readapted from an old anatomical theatre, in this case the eighteenth-centurySchool of Surgery, as recalled by the presence of sculptures representing Germainde la Martinière (1697–1783) and François de la Peyronnie (1678–1747). It was abig, semi-circular room, with a domed roof and steeply raked seats for around1,400 students.49 Not all professors were able to attract such a large audience. AnAmerican visitor in 1837 noted only fifty students in the amphitheatre at the lecturesof André Dumeril (1774–1860) or François Broussais (1771–1838), while duringOrfila’s lectures it was “crowded to overflowing.”50 Many important public activi-ties of the Faculty of Medicine took place in this amphitheatre, including the “séancede rentrée” which usually started with an address by one of the professors, followedby the presentation of prizes to the most outstanding students.51 Thus, the impor-tance of the amphitheatre was due to both the large number of students followingthe lectures and its symbolic meaning as the main public space of the ParisFaculty of Medicine. This fact explains why one of Orfila’s students (who laterbecame a close friend), the doctor Prosper Ménière (1799–1862), affirmed that“one had to see Orfila at the amphitheatre in order to apprehend his value”:

Standing in front of the experimental table, in the presence of a crowd of students wholistened eagerly, the professor developed his lecture with such a method, enchaining theideas, drawing conclusions, going from deduction to deduction until the evidence wascomplete. One can truly say that this vast amphitheatre is too narrow for the masses

45“The Hospital of Surgeons of Paris,” 108.

46 Frank Hastings Hamilton, “Notes of a European Tour,” Buffalo Medical Journal 1 (1845): 49–55, on 52–53. SeeWarner, Against the Spirit of System, 87 and 94.

47 Bertomeu and Vidal, Mateu Orfila, 259–66.48 Dubois, “Eloge d’Orfila,” xx.49 Adolphe Joanne, Paris illustré. Nouveau guide l’étranger et du parisien (Paris: Hachette, 1867), 727–28. On

nineteenth-century lecture amphitheatres, see Sophie Forgan, “Architecture of Science and the Idea of a University,”Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 20 (1989): 405–34; Marta Lourenço and Ana Carneiro, eds., Spacesand Collections in the History of Science (Lisbon: Museum of Science of the University of Lisbon, 2009).

50“Letter by Professor Parker,” The Western Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences 11 (1837): 160–62, quotedon 161.

51 The opening sessions were regularly described in medical journals. See, for instance, Anon., “Séance de rentrée de laFaculté de Médecine et distribution des prix,” L’Expérience 7, no. 332 (1843): 304–05.


who crowded it, that M. Orfila has tasted the glory which touched him more deeply: thesatisfaction of seeing his efforts appreciated and his zeal recognized, the happiness offeeling himself useful, and seeing that there, at least, he did not lack of gratitude.52

The amphitheatre was crucial for Orfila’s authority, whereas in other spaces, likecourtrooms and academies, his methods were bitterly criticised by other experts.The move to the large amphitheatre brought not only increased space, but also achange in the composition of the audience, which, apart from medical students,included “young doctors, general practitioners from the town and even professors ofthe Faculty of Medicine,” as well as the general public, particularly when the lectureswere somehow related to famous trials.53 An American doctor reported in 1845 that,

Orfila has generally a full audience, yet if I may quote the current gossip, it is less the manthan his learning which constitutes him a favourite.On dit that he has during many yearsprostituted his talents and reputation as chemist to the conviction of all persons accusedof poisoning, whether really innocent or guilty, indeed that he occupies in all criminalcases of this character a mean between accuser and executioner.54

As Dr Hamilton indicates, Orfila’s authority in the chemistry lecture hall wasdrawn into question by his participation in famous poisoning trials which producedfierce controversies, and not only between experts. At the same time, these contro-versial trials captivated the attention of the general public, enlarging the audience forOrfila’s lectures. For instance, in the months after the Lafarge affair, Orfila gaveseveral lectures at the Faculty of Medicine that were attended by a commissionfrom the Academy of Medicine. The lecture hall was crowded with a large,curious audience, while the lectures were fully covered by the popular press andmany medical journals, and were soon translated into other languages. Using hisimproved version of the new Marsh’s test for arsenic, Orfila performed severalchemical analyses of samples and conducted numerous animal experimentsrelated to contentious topics, for instance on the absorption and elimination ofpoisons. He even conducted some experiments suggested by members of his audi-ence on issues raised at a recent poisoning trial.55 In so doing, the audiencemembers at Orfila’s lectures became active witnesses of a large number of demon-strations whose main purpose was to transform what were highly controversialtopics in courtrooms into plain matters of fact, proved by experiments which pro-duced material evidence that could be seen and sometimes touched.In many other cases, Orfila employed the symbolic space of the amphitheatre, his

authoritative voice, and the experimental demonstrations to support his views onhighly controversial issues. In one of these lectures, he described a new method ofgalvanising metal developed by two of his students, performing several operations

52 Prosper Ménière, “Nécrologie. M. Orfila,” Le Moniteur Universel, 15 March 1853: 300.53 Dubois, “Eloge d’Orfila,” xx.54 Hamilton, “Notes of a European Tour,” 52–53.55 LeMoniteur, 26 October 1840, 2159; L’Esculape, 5 November 1840, 109–12.More details in Bertomeu, “Managing

Uncertainty.”


of gilding and silvering. Orfila praised the new method as “an incontestable inven-tion.”56 However, the issue soon became a matter of contention in court: the twostudents were sued for infringement of patent by the French industrialist CharlesCristofle (1805–1863), who had supposedly acquired the rights for the new tech-niques of gold and silver galvanisation.57 The episode also shows that Orfila dis-cussed cutting-edge research in his lectures, inviting the authors, as in this case, toperform new experiments. Indeed, it seems that this was a standard practice in Par-isian chemistry courses. For instance, at the beginning of 1841, Adrien Thilorier(1790–1844), who had invented a method for obtaining solid carbon dioxide, pre-sented his experiments at the Sorbonne, the Faculty of Medicine, and the School ofPharmacy (where a terrible accident happened).58 Pierre Boutigny, an apothecaryfrom Evreux, repeated his new experiments on the “spheroidal state” (which heregarded as “a new branch of physics”) at many academic institutions in Paris,including the Faculty of Medicine as part of Orfila’s lectures.59

Thus, the courses on chemistry provided occasions for learning and research,where the most recent experiments could be performed, sometimes by their disco-verers, even when the experimental phenomena were not clearly understood,subject to contradictory interpretations, or fraught with controversy in courtrooms.Many examples from Orfila’s courses show that lectures were sometimes departurepoints for investigating new issues—for instance, if an unexpected result wasobtained, or if an improvement to a technique was imagined while preparing thelecture, or was even suggested by the audience. In this sense, the amphitheatre ofthe Faculty of Medicine overlapped with other sites of research, like the Paris Aca-demies of Science and Medicine.60

Academies

Orfila’s career as an academician started very promisingly in 1815, when he waselected membre correspondant of the Paris Academy of Science. And yet, he nevermanaged to obtain a permanent position there. In 1821, he and François Magendiereceived the same number of votes, both being described as “authors of works usefulfor medical science,” but finally Magendie was elected. The following year Orfilastood as a candidate but did not obtain a single vote. At the end of the 1830s,after three more failed attempts, Orfila finally abandoned the quest.61

56 Anon., “Exposition complète de l’histoire de la galvanoplastie,” Technologiste (1847): 341–46, on 344.57 Wellcome Library, London, WMS. 7375/152. See also Journal des débats, 12 April 1847.58 Journal général de l’instruction publique 10 (6 January 1841), 12. On Thilorier’s experiments, see Duane

H. D. Roller, “Thilorier and the First Solidification of a Permanent Gas (1835),” Isis 43 (1952): 109–13, andJoost Mertens, “Du côté d’un chimiste nommé Thilorier,” L’Année balzacienne 4 (2003): 251–63.

59 Pierre H. Boutigny,Nouvelle branche de physique: ou, Etudes sur les corps à l’état sphéroïdal (Paris: Masson, 1847),xvii–xviii.

60 On this issue, see García-Belmar, “The Didactic Uses of Experiment.”61 Paris, Archives of the Académie des Sciences, Dossier Orfila. See also José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez “Animal Exper-

iments, Vital Forces and Courtrooms: Mateu Orfila, François Magendie and the Study of Poisons in Nineteenth-Century France,” Annals of Science 69 (2012): 1–26.


He was much more successful at the Academy of Medicine. He was among thefounding members when this institution was created in 1820, and actively partici-pated in its academic activities: delivering papers (some of which were publishedin the Academy’s journals), contributing to academic discussions and debates, andwriting reports on papers presented by external authors or on topics requested bythe government. By a large majority of votes, he was elected president in December1850, just a few years before his death.62

The Academy developed a double role: as an advisory body for public health andmedical organisation issues, and as a research forum for presenting and discussingpapers on various topics related to medicine. The number of full permanentmembers oscillated between one and two hundred during its first decades, organisedinto eleven thematic sections. Alongside these were other groups: non-residents,national correspondents (the largest group, formed of around 400 members),foreign associates, and “associés libres” (a selected group of eminent scientists).The Academy was poorly funded compared with the Academy of Sciences, andwas compelled to hold its sessions in provisional rented buildings: first, in anamphitheatre of the Faculty of Medicine, then in a building at the rue de Poitiers.By the middle of the century, the Academy had moved to a chapel at the CharitéHospital on the rue des Saints-Pères. On entering this building, academicianswalked through the Salle des Pas Perdus, where many public activities took place.This was filled with marble statues and paintings related to medical history,besides busts and portraits of deceased academicians. Next to this antechamberwas the main meeting hall, whose courtroom appearance seemed to convey thesense of a tribunal of medical science. The sessions were held weekly on Tuesdays.A regular session opened by reviewing correspondence (particularly that sent bythe government asking for reports), after which the secretary read reports preparedby the commissions of the Academy, and, finally, several oral presentations by aca-demicians, generally followed by a debate. The papers read at the Academy weresometimes published in its journals, Mémoires (1828–) and the Bulletin (1836–),particularly those written by permanent members (non-members’ and correspon-dents’ papers were evaluated by a commission). The meetings were reported byseveral medical journals, enlarging the audience for presentations and debates.The papers mostly addressed practical clinical concerns (therapeutic remedies)and specific diseases, whereas just a small group dealt with fundamental sciences.63

Many of the papers read by Orfila at the Academy of Medicine were closely relatedto his work as a forensic physician. He also presented papers reporting animal exper-iments on arsenic poisoning, or clinical observations on antidotes and poisoning,while presenting his research on poison absorption and normal arsenic.64 He

62 Bulletin de l’Académie de Médecine, 24 December 1850, 189.63 GeorgWeisz, TheMedical Mandarins: The French Academy ofMedicine in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Cen-

turies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).64 Mateu Orfila, “Mémoire sur l’empoisonnement par l’acide arsénieux,” Bulletin de l’Académie Royale de Médecine 3

(1839): 426–64.


sometimes submitted sealed notes (plis cachetés), a common way of reportingongoing research, usually employed to claim priority over scientific discovery.65

Orfila collaborated in preparing reports for the government, reviewing papers,and actively participating in debates at the Academy. His most substantial contri-butions were the papers that he presented at the general sessions. One representativeexample is the first paper he published in the Bulletin: “A poisoning case tried beforethe Court of Assizes of the Côte-d’Or.”66 This described the trial of the jurist KarlRittinghausen, who had been accused of poisoning a friend using lead and coppersalts. While in confinement, Rittinghausen wrote a letter to Orfila, who answeredwith a long report supporting the defendant’s innocence. However, the trial nevertook place because the prisoner hanged himself in his cell. Working on the problemsraised by this trial, Orfila performed further experiments on dogs, and his reportgrew into a more general work on lead and copper poisoning which Orfila presentedto the Academy in 1840.67 Some months later, on 4 August 1840, he reviewed“several arsenic poisoning trials, recently judged by the tribunals of thekingdom,” many of which had attracted public attention and were discussed insalons and reported in the press.68

Many of these trials were fraught with controversy. Often Orfila’s reports were atodds with previous tests or post-mortem examinations. In other cases, new expertsintroduced approaches which challenged Orfila’s conclusions. Or, as happenedwhen François-Vincent Raspail (1794–1878) in particular was involved, expertsand lawyers managed to create a sceptical atmosphere in the courts, demandingstandards of proof out of the reach of toxicologists. Some of these controversiesmoved into other social and scientific spaces, such as lecture halls or salons, and,in some cases, became topics of discussion at the Academy of Medicine. Controver-sies appeared frequently in the Academy, breaking out even more bitterly when theywere related to candidatures for membership and prizes, or when critical reportswere presented about new medical treatments, chirurgical operations, or drugs.Sparked by the famous Lafarge affair, one of these debates took place in 1841 over

the reliability of the Marsh test for arsenic and the new improvements introduced byOrfila. Committees were created at both the Academy of Science and the Academyof Medicine. The final report of the Academy of Science was highly critical ofOrfila’s methods and challenged some of his main conclusions (for instance, thoserelated to normal arsenic). Not surprisingly, the debate on the same topic at the

65 SeeWeisz, TheMedical Mandarins, andMaurice Crosland, Science Under Control: The French Academy of Sciences,1795–1914 (Cambridge: University Press, 1992). Some of Orfila’s plis cachetés are preserved at the Archives of theAcademy of Medicine, Paris, Plis cachetés, number 52. See Bertomeu, “Managing Uncertainty.”

66 Mateu Orfila, “Affaire d’empoisonnement portée devant la Cour d’Assises de la Côte-d’Or,” Bulletin de l’AcadémieRoyale de Médecine 3 (1838): 93–112.

67 Mateu Orfila, “Empoisonnement par les sels de plomb,” Bulletin de l’Académie Royale de Médecine 3, (1838): 161–77; Mateu Orfila, “Sur l’empoisonnement par les sels de cuivre,” Mémoires de l’Académie Royale de Médecine 8(1840): 522–67.

68 Mateu Orfila, “Mémoire sur plusieurs affaires d’empoisonnement par l’arsenic, récemment jugées par les coursd’assisses du royaume,” Bulletin de l’Académie Royale de Médecine 5 (1840): 465–75. Reprinted with additionsin Mémoires de l’Académie Royale de Médecine 9 (1841): 1–57.


Paris Academy ofMedicine produced very different results. Orfila had many allies atthe Academy, where only a small group of academicians, such as Pierre NicolasGerdy (1797–1856), dared to challenge his conclusions. The final report praisedOrfila’s work highly, and was inconclusive on controversial issues. The Academyof Science, in contrast, recommended a new method for identifying arsenicalspots, clearly rejecting many conclusions from Orfila’s earlier research on arsenic.The final reports differed so much that some academicians worried that an insti-tutional conflict might arise between the two Academies.69

Courtrooms

Controversies between experts were common in French courts during the nineteenthcentury. The new Code d’Instruction Criminelle (1808) established that the examin-ing magistrate (juge d’instruction) had to be assisted by one or two physicians incases where a violent death was suspected. Under oath, the experts produced awritten report answering the magistrate’s questions concerning the circumstancesand nature of the crime. The report was expected to include a preliminary sectionwith a detailed description of all the relevant data (clinical symptoms, post-mortemobservations, chemical tests, etc.), including inconclusive experiments or negativeresults. At the end of the report, the final conclusions had to be based on thewhole set of “medical facts.”70 Both “facts” and “conclusions” were frequentlyquestioned by other experts, and disagreements often arose within the group ofexperts. In these cases, the judge might request new reports from a new group, orelse might accept the proposal of the defence or the prosecution, who could alsorequire the advice of other experts—as happened in many trials in which Orfila par-ticipated. A request for an additional report was by no means rare, particularly incases where medical and scientific data played a major role as incriminatory evi-dence or when chemical tests were performed by inexperienced physicians and theresults were inconclusive.Trials usually took place in the main town of a département. The sessions were

under the direction of a judge, assisted by two other junior colleagues, who ques-tioned defendants, witnesses, and experts, accepted or rejected the questionssuggested by the prosecution and defence, and wrote the final sentence (includingthe scope of penalty) on the basis of the decisions made by the panel of jurors.Jurors were selected from among the local notables (only a small percentage ofthe male population was eligible between 1815 and 1848) and were required tocome to a judgement on the basis of their “intimate conviction.” Lawyers werekeen to present their arguments persuasively and they employed all their rhetoricalskills in the final plaidoiries, summarising their views concerning the available evi-dence in order to convince the jurors of the innocence (or culpability) of the

69 See Bertomeu, “Managing Uncertainty.”70 Alphonse Devergie, Traité théorique et pratique de médecine légale, vol. I (Paris: Baillière, 1836), 15–16.


defendants. This atmosphere of spectacle and performance attracted crowds to thecourtrooms, particularly in famous trials such as the Lafarge case.71

In this context, the role of experts was not easy. They were compelled to presenttheir reports in a way that was both comprehensible to the lay members of the juryand conclusive enough to strengthen (or, sometimes, shake or reverse) their internalconviction. Facing the reluctance of jurors to return verdicts involving the deathpenalty, judges wanted expert reports to be conclusive without any source of uncer-tainty or doubt. This was sometimes a source of tension between experts andjudges.72 In order to offer convincing evidence, some forms of proof were more suit-able than others. For instance, when clinical data or post-mortem signs were atstake, the mediation of experts was unavoidable in order to draw firm conclusions.In contrast, some chemical tests (the Marsh test, for instance) isolated the poison inits metallic state, providing a tangible form of evidence, which could be seen andtouched by the jurors. Arsenic could now be dramatically presented in court asthe corpus delicti. Orfila made full use of the immediate, visual evidence providedby the Marsh test as persuasive proof. He circulated the arsenical black crustsamong the jurors during trials, so they could “see for themselves” the materialproof of crime. This display was also employed in his lectures at the ParisMedical Faculty and in debates at the Academy of Medicine.73

Again, geography matters because the different forms of forensic evidence wereunequally distributed in space. Sophisticated toxicological methods were not avail-able to all the experts who participated in poisoning trials. The main advantage oflocal doctors and pharmacists was their first-hand knowledge of the clinical historyof their patients and the performance of post-mortem examinations. However, theydid not have access to the kind of laboratory facilities available to Orfila in order toconduct high-sensitivity chemical tests. They could hardly become skilled at themodern laboratory techniques which they knew only from perusing medical text-books and journals. Moreover, the distribution of academic power was alsohighly imbalanced. François-Vincent Raspail often complained about the unfairnessof confronting “an all-powerful expert in the administration” with “simple provin-cial pharmacists, with no other power than their own good reputation, and with noother authority than their knowledge and probity.” Local experts might perhapsbecome “involved in the machinations of an institution, or be led to apply for a pos-ition” in the future. Thanks to the political connections he established in the salons,during the 1830s Orfila became one of those who decided “university appointments

71 For more information on expert reports and the French legal system, see Frédéric Chauvaud and Laurence Dumoulin,Experts et expertise judiciaire: France, XIXe et XXe siècles (Rennes: PUR, 2003), 192–98. On the differencesbetween the French ‘inquisitorial’ system and the British and American adversarial systems, see Olivier Leclerc,Le juge et l’expert: contribution a l’étude des rapports entre le droit et la science (Paris: LDGJ, 2005), 361–98.

72 On the problem of jury mitigation of punishment in nineteenth-century France, see JamesM. Donovan, Juries and theTransformation of Criminal Justice in France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Chapel Hill: University ofCarolina Press, 2010), 5–6 and 37–48. See Leclerc, Le juge et l’expert, 91–124, for a discussion on the legal construc-tion of factuality in the French system. On this issue in the British context, see Ian Burney, Poison, Detection and theVictorian Imagination (Manchester: University Press, 2006).

73 On this issue, see Bertomeu “Managing Uncertainty.”


and dismissals in Paris.” On the other hand, his adversaries Francesco Rognetta (anItalian physician exiled in Paris) and Raspail (president of the democratic club“Friends of the People” and editor of political newspapers) were Republican acti-vists who were under surveillance by the police and spent some years in prisonfor their radical opposition to the Louis Philippe regime.74

Many examples show that Orfila took full advantage of his institutional positionand his political connections in both academies and courtrooms. When a contro-versy on arsenic antidotes between Rognetta and Orfila reached its climax at theAcademy of Medicine during the summer of 1839, the Italian physician was putunder arrest and questioned by the prefect of police. At the police station he metOrfila, who asked him to write a letter admitting that some of his earlier assertionswere wrong. Rognetta refused and, if we trust his account of this strange meeting,Orfila threatened to prevent him from lecturing in the Paris Medical Faculty orfrom practising medicine, and even to expel him from France.75 In spite of his power-ful position, Orfila’s reports were frequently challenged in courtrooms by Raspailand other experts who questioned the alleged plainness of the facts presented byOrfila. Raspail pointed out sources of impurities in reagents and vessels, traces ofpoison in healthy individuals, misleading side effects, or undiscovered substanceswith similar properties to known poisons.The management of toxicological data in these different spaces (amphitheatres,

salons, academy halls, and courtrooms) was a key issue in these expert controver-sies. Poisoning trials and expert reports generally involved new questions and chal-lenges but, even more importantly, they provided unique data on clinical symptomsand post-mortem examinations. Let us take a final example from Orfila’s researchon the absorption of poisons and theMarsh test for arsenic. Starting in 1838, he per-formed numerous experiments with dogs and employed all the available clinical dataoffered by recent poisoning cases, notably two recent cases of suicide using arsenic.The most famous was the poisoning of Soufflard, a convicted murderer who hadcommitted suicide by ingesting a large amount of arsenic in prison. Just two dayslater, Orfila performed several tests on Soufflard’s blood in the presence of“around 1200 students” who attended his lectures at the Faculty of Medicine. Heobtained a “notable proportion” of arsenic which could be “seen and touched”by the audience. During the next days, Orfila gave a talk at the Paris Academy ofMedicine, in which he described his experiments and discussed the problem ofabsorption, showing Soufflard’s stomach to his colleagues. Thus, after just a fewweeks, the mortal remains of Soufflard were moved from prison to Orfila’s labora-tory and then to the big amphitheatre of the Faculty of Medicine and, finally, to theAcademy of Medicine, where they were transformed into material evidence tosupport Orfila’s controversial views on the absorption of poisons. Closing the

74 François-Vincent Raspail, Accusation d’empoisonnement par l’arsenic (Paris: Gazette des Hôpitaux, 1840), 24. OnRaspail, see Dora B. Weiner, Raspail. Scientist and Reformer… (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).

75 Gazette des Hôpitaux, 12 (1839): 409.


circle, Orfila would present this evidence in court against his opponents duringfuture poisoning trials.76

Circulations

Thanks to his diverse activities, Orfila created connections between different socialsites while encouraging the circulation of problems, controversies, data, visual dis-plays, and material culture (such as corpses, organs, samples, reagents, and instru-ments). This circulation was creative, complex, and polycentric: many academicand social borders had to be crossed, sometimes with the reluctant compliance ofgate-keepers and inhabitants who could filter the items, highlight particular ingredi-ents, or remould them in many different ways. Every social space had its own ‘eti-quette of science,’ implicit rules, values, and expectations about which topics weredeemed appropriate to be treated in the particular space. Some topics were unfa-shionable, others were held to be in bad taste, or perhaps inappropriate and inad-missible in certain spaces (lecture halls, academies) while regarded as excellentissues for discussion, conversation, or lecturing in other spaces (such as salons).77

In many cases, particularly when he was involved in new research on arsenic, thecontrast between Orfila’s public rhetoric and private research became stronglymarked, even more so when he was urged to present in court the results of workwhich was sometimes still in progress. Orfila asked his collaborators to proceed cau-tiously in those cases in which toxicological research on sensitive matters might“strike terror in society.” Their answers to the questions of judges and jurors hadto be convincing and irrefutable. What might be said in an academic debate at theAcademy of Medicine differed from what was appropriate for an expert report incourt. The same applied to lecture halls and salons.78

Each site manifested different registers of orality: from talks and debates inlearned academies, to cross-examinations in courts, lectures in amphitheatres, andpolite conversation in salons. They also had explicit or implicit rules concerningwhat could or could not be said, who was allowed to participate, and what wasthe expected role of speakers and their audiences. There were always the absentvoices of those who were not allowed to speak, or were denied access.79 In thisrespect, the unequal distribution of political and academic power was decisive.Orfila enjoyed many advantages thanks to his excellent connections to the Orleanist

76 Mateu Orfila, “De l’empoisonnement par l’acide arsénieux, par M. …,” Bulletin de l’Académie Royale de Médecine3 (1839): 676–83, quoted on 679. See also L’Expérience 91, 28 March 1839, 208. It was common to bring organsinto the Academy of Medicine when discussing pathological anatomy issues. See Weisz, The Medical Mandarins,161.

77 Secord, “How Scientific Conversation Became Shop Talk.”78 Quotation from Gazette des Hôpitaux 12 (1839): 593. See Bertomeu “Managing Uncertainty.”79 Livingstone, “Landscapes of Knowledge,” in Geographies of Science, 1–20, quoted on 16. See also David

N. Livingstone, “Science, Site and Speech: Scientific Knowledge and the Spaces of Rhetoric,” History of HumanSciences 20 (2007): 71–96; François Wacquet, Parler comme un livre. L’oralité et le savoir (XVIe-XXe siècle)(Paris: Albin Michel, 2003); José Pardo-Tomás, ed., “Ciencia, historia y escritura,” Cultura escrita y sociedad 10(2010): 7–175.


monarchy and his powerful position as dean of the Faculty of Medicine and memberof many governmental commissions. However, his colleagues in academies, his audi-ence in classrooms, and his republican opponents in courts were by no meanspassive or helpless. They had their own resources and ways of gaining access tothe different spaces involved and of participating in the controversies.The most conspicuous examples of uneven exchanges and the inequality of power

were found inside the classrooms, but both students and professors were somehowconstrained by the rules of etiquette.80 In the amphitheatre of the Faculty of Medi-cine, students were expected to follow the lectures, take notes, and watch the exper-imental demonstrations given by Orfila and his assistants. The examples mentionedabove show that students could also introduce particular topics, ask for additionalinformation, or present recent research on controversial issues. Auditors were not,however, expected to offer bold opinions or further experimental data that ques-tioned the point of view of the professor. With the help of his laboratory assistants,Orfila performed many animal experiments and chemical tests supporting his some-times controversial views, which could hardly be questioned in this educationalcontext. On the other hand, when Orfila’s reports were presented in court, his con-clusions were frequently challenged by other experts or by the naïve (but puzzling)questions of lawyers and jurors. In a very different vein, Orfila’s talks, papers, andreports were fully commented on and sometimes criticised when presented at theAcademy of Medicine.The different codes of etiquette and division of labour in academies, lecture halls,

and courts were carefully employed by the participants in the controversy over theMarsh test which took place in France between 1840 and 1841. As discussed above,Orfila attempted to transport the controversy from the courts to the space in whichhe could mobilise the largest number of supporting voices: the Academy of Medi-cine. However, his opponents clearly identified the Academy of Science, whichnever accepted Orfila as a permanent member, as a more promising place inwhich to do battle. In courts, the situation was even worse for Orfila. Judges andlawyers decided on the experts permitted to participate in the controversy, so thatacademic outsiders such as Francesco Rognetta and François-Vincent Raspailfound more room for their critical and sceptical voices.In 1840, during a poisoning trial which took place in Albi in southern France,

Raspail was called by the defence and presented a memoir undermining the con-clusions of Orfila’s expert report. In front of the jurors, Orfila answered onlythose of Raspail’s objections “apparently having some value,” but remained silentconcerning remarks that he regarded as “extraordinary and without value.” Andhe defied Raspail to present his research at the Paris Academy of Medicine, where“it could be judged by competent men.”Orfila rhetorically argued that, “if Raspail’s

80 On this issue, see Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry, 4–5 and 108–09. On imbalances ofpower and circulation of science see the studies reviewed by Kostas Gavroglu, “The STEP initiative: Attempting toHistoricize the Notion of European Science,” Centaurus 54 (2012): 311–27.


claims are true, he would render a great service to society by demonstrating thatwhat is everywhere accepted as truth, is in fact just a mistake.” Raspail soonanswered with a letter to the press, announcing that he was willing to accept thechallenge, but not in front of the members of the Academy of Medicine. “Thejudge,” according to Raspail, should be “all the people, the public.” He suggesteda list of controversial issues to be tested by experiments performed by bothhimself and Orfila at the amphitheatre of the Faculty of Medicine. The lecturehall would be opened to the general public but the front seats would be reservedfor doctors, pharmacists, and students of human and veterinary medicine. Orfilacould not but disagree with such a proposal, which completely inverted the implicitrules of his most important space, the amphitheatre, and transformed his audienceinto the judge of the controversy:

Mr. Raspail would prefer a controversy in front of tout le monde rather than having hisopinions judged by the Institute or the Royal Academy of Medicine. The issues at stakebeing among the most difficult ones, everyone has already decided that it is better tosubmit them to the judgement of the eminent men who are part of these scholarlybodies, rather than to that of the crowd, which is almost always ignorant.81

Both Orfila and Raspail realised that the spaces in which the controversy was con-ducted would be decisive in framing the issues at stake. Other protagonists were alsoconcerned about the advantages and inconveniences presented by situating the con-troversy at one or other of the Academies. The same applied to the various medicaljournals and popular newspapers in which debates on toxicological tests werereported. Nineteenth-century toxicologists such as Orfila knew that changes inspace and media could substantially affect the final resolution and eventualclosure of controversies.82

Conclusions

Like Orfila, other authors advantageously exploited the multiple spaces for practis-ing science and medicine in early nineteenth-century Paris, not only in the new teach-ing and research institutions which emerged after the Revolution, but also in thelesser-known sites of salons and private lectures. For example, François Magendie,who passed his examinations at the Faculty of Medicine just three years beforeOrfila, also gave popular public courses on medicine and physiology which soonbecame a source of “joy and resource.” His first biographer remarked that theyoung Magendie also “devoted a third of his time to introducing himself into thesalons.”83 Many other physicians and scientists frequented the Parisian salons,but only a few opened their private homes and offered musical soirées as Orfila

81 Gazette des Tribunaux, 10 June 1840. The previous quotations by Raspail are taken from Gazette des Tribunaux, 6,7 and 8 June 1840.

82 For more general discussion, see Shapin, “The House of Experiment.”Onmedico-legal controversies and closure, seeMichael Lynch, Simon A. Cole, Ruth McNally, and Kathleen Jordan, Truth Machine: The Contentious History ofDNA Fingerprinting (Chicago, University Press: 2008).


successfully did after 1830. Likewise, Orfila’s membership of advisory boards andhis strong connections with political power were not unique. Since the eighteenthcentury and notably after the French Revolution, a number of scientists and phys-icians held important political positions, even if few became as influential asOrfila during his tenure as dean of the Faculty of Medicine. The main singularitiesof Orfila’s career are his origins and his outstanding role as expert in courts. Manyother “pensionados” (and, later on, political exiles) travelled from Spain to Paris,but none developed such a successful career in French medicine during the nine-teenth century. Moreover, his participation in notorious trials transformed Orfilainto a celebrity whose fame extended into faculties and academies beyond Frenchborders.By connecting different sites, Orfila encouraged the exchanges of objects, data,

and values and the overlapping and hybridisation of spaces. All the sites analysedhere played multiple roles and supported diverse activities related to toxicologyand legal medicine. Courtrooms could become crucial sources of valuable clinicaldata, post-mortem examinations, and toxicological problems as well as spaces inwhich chemical tests were refined and applied to new issues. The laboratory ofthe Faculty of Medicine was used for preparing lectures and chemical demon-strations, but also for performing animal experiments related to topics discussedin court. Besides lectures intended for medical students, the large amphitheatrewas employed for presenting new and controversial research to a large audience,attracted by the popularity of the poisoning trials in which Orfila participated asan expert witness. Expert reports were read not only in court but also at theAcademy of Medicine and published in its Bulletin and other medical journals,such as the Annales d’hygiène publique et de médecine légale. Verbatim accountsof popular trials could become popular enough to be eagerly read by a large audi-ence and were transformed into sources of polite conversation in salons. It isharder to capture the more elusive elements from the visual and oral culture ofdisplay, performance, experimental demonstration, and lecturing, which largelycontributed towards reinforcing Orfila’s authority and credibility. His melodicvoice, experimental skills, physical performance, and rhetorical abilities serveddiverse functions in different sites. At the same time, although these embodied prac-tices were largely shaped by the sites in which they took place, Orfila himself wasable to move between contexts, adapting his resources to different social and cul-tural spaces.During the controversies, Orfila carefully mobilised all these resources, which also

included laboratory facilities, clinical data, and corpses for post-mortem examin-ations as well as his excellent political connections and his enormous academicpower during the reign of Louis-Philippe. All these scientific, material, and politicalassets were intermingled and contributed decisively to the imbalanced development

83 Jean-Pierre Flourens, Eloge historique de François Magendie (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1858), 7. See Bertomeu, “AnimalExperiments.”


and closure of the controversies between Orfila and his opponents. Nineteenth-century toxicologists like Orfila and Raspail acknowledged that spatial andgeographical features could become crucial in shaping controversies betweenexperts. They attempted to transport the debates from courts to classrooms andfrom academies to salons, and in the opposite direction. In doing so, they tried toemploy for their own purposes the sharp differences in conditions of access, author-ised participants, economies of credibility, standards of proof, or, in more generalterms, what counted for science in each site. The episodes analysed here confirmthat a biographical approach brings fresh opportunities to link the variety of activi-ties developed in these different environments, sometimes revealing unequalexchanges and unstable connections between different sites of chemistry, whichcannot be fully appreciated when focusing on a particular institution or location.

Acknowledgements

This paper is part of a larger study on nineteenth-century toxicology supported byprogram HAR2009-12918-C03-03. I am very grateful to John Perkins and AntonioGarcía-Belmar for the organisation of the meeting “Sites of Chemistry in the Nine-teenth Century” in which earlier versions of the essay were discussed. I would likealso to acknowledge the anonymous referees for Ambix.

Notes on contributorJosé Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez is a member of the Institute for the History of Medi-cine and Science (University of Valencia-CSIC). He has published (with Bernadette-Vincent and Antonio García-Belmar) L’emérgence d’une science des manuels (Paris:Archives contemporaines, 2003), (with Agustí Nieto-Galan) Chemistry, Medicineand Crime: Mateu Orfila (1787–1853) and His Times (Sagamore Beach: ScienceHistory Publications, 2006), and (with Antonio García-Belmar) La revoluciónquímica: entre la historia y la memoria (Valencia: PUV, 2006). His current researchis focused on nineteenth-century forensic medicine and the works of Mateu Orfila,whose autobiography and letters he has edited in collaboration with Josep MiquelVidal (Mahon: IME, 2011). Address: Institut d’Història de la Medicina i de laCiència López Piñero (Universitat de València-CSIC) Plaça Cisneros, 4, 46003-València (Spain). Email: [email protected]


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