Brain, Mind, and Medicine

Charles Richet and the Origins of Physiological Psychology

Robert Guskind, Stewart Wolf

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138519756
• eBook ISBN: 9781351530828
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology

Charles Richet was one of the most remarkable figures in the history of medical science. He is best known for his work on the body's immune reactions to foreign substances for which he won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1913. Richet was also a poet, playwright, historian, bibliographer, political activist, classical scholar, and pioneer in aircraft design.Brain, Mind, and Medicine is the first major biography of Richet in any language. Wolf brilliantly situates Richet's work in the intellectual currents of Europe during the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Richet was a contemporary of Wilhelm Wundt and William James. All three considered psychology to be an aspect of physiology governed by biological laws. But while James and Wundt considered consciousness as a process influenced by experience without much reference to neural structures, Richet's focus was on the brain itself as shaped by genetics and experience and serving as the organ of the mind.Brain, Mind, and Medicine illuminates a significant chapter in scientific and cultural history. It should be read by medical scientists, historians, and individuals interested in medicine and psychology.

1

Charles Richet’s Background and the Shaping of His Endeavor 1850-1869

Richet—c’est un nom de Seigneur, a lordly name, as they say in France. The most widely known and clearly the most lordly bearer of that name was Charles Richet, professor of physiology at the Faculté de Médecine in Paris from 1887 to 1925.

There were other distinguished medical Richets: father Alfred, who held the chair in surgery in the Faculté de Médecine and served as chief surgeon at the Hotel Dieu, the post formerly held by the famous surgeon Guillaume Dupuytren (1777-1835), Charles’ son, Charles fils, who became professor of medicine and grandson, Gabriel, professor of medicine, recently retired. The Richet dynasty held full professorships at the Faculté de Médecine of Paris during 122 years from 1864 to 1986.

Charles Richet is best known for the discovery of anaphylaxis that, from studies begun in 1902, won him the Nobel Prize in 1913. Anaphylaxis is a severe and potentially fatal hypersensitivity reaction induced by an injection of a foreign substance, usually a protein, to which an individual has already been sensitized. Richet devised the term from the Greek ana and phylaxis, meaning “against protection,” to contrast with the word prophylaxis, meaning “for protection.”

Richet’s discoveries, made while exploring the phenomena of anaphylaxis, actually linked hypersensitivity to protection and thereby led to the unraveling of the mystery of immunity conferred by vaccination and inoculation. They led ultimately to our current understanding of the role of the nerves in regulating the immune system. In this and others of his discoveries Richet’s primary contribution was conceptual, the concept being that the manifestations of disease constitute the body’s own protective response to invaders rather than representing incursive damage done by external forces. Further, on the basis of evidence adduced by Richet, the concept holds that the body’s adaptive efforts to protect against or contain agents of disease are instituted and regulated in the brain. Richet’s central concern was the protection and perfecting of the human organism, an intellectual agenda so broad that most of his physiological contributions, although often original, were fragmentary. His curious mind was subject to distraction by a wide range of concerns including some outside the range of physiology that in his view related, nevertheless, to the objective of enhancing the quality of the human race.

The promise of eugenics was one such concern that held great appeal for Richet and he devoted much time to it. In a monograph distributed in manuscript form to some of his colleagues and ultimately published in 1919, Richet wrote, “nothing is more extraordinary than our indifference to human selection. One could laugh if it were not so unfortunate. We improve breeds of chickens, ducks, horses, pigs, lambs, even species of cauliflower, beets, strawberries, and violets! Man improves and perfects everything except man himself.”^{R 595} Richet favored limiting procreation by the deformed and the intellectually handicapped, but encouraged large families for those potentially able to contribute to civilization.

Interest in eugenics grew out of the work of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) that had great appeal for Richet although most French biologists at the time were skeptical of Darwin’s book, Origin of Species (Darwin 1859), belittled it, or were openly antagonistic. Others credited Darwin only with having extended or refined the work of Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1829). Even Richet, in his book Physiologie des Muscles et des Nerfs, wrote that the theory of evolution was “conceived by Lamarck and Etienne Geoffrey St. Hilaire (1772-1844), our two illustrious compatriots; it was revived, recreated afresh, so to speak, and popularized by Charles Darwin.”^{R 98}

Richet was also concerned with the loss to France of fine human specimens in wars. Richet opposed war and considered pacifism the best way to preserve the world’s human potential, especially that of France.

Another area, seemingly peripheral to physiology, but one that Richet viewed as potentially useful toward the full development of humanity and in which he made a large personal investment, was an aspect of spiritualism for which he coined the term “metapsychique.” He saw extrasensory perception as a physiological capability that had not been fully developed and should therefore become the object of serious scientific study.

Finally, as a way of elevating the human species, Richet turned to the humanities, history philosophy and literature, both prose and poetry. His poetry twice won special recognition from the Académie Française. Literature was for Richet a means of growth and a respite from daily demands and responsibilities. It separated him from outside influences, thus allowing full play to his thoughts and imagination. As Richet himself put it “by living in the world of men one ends perforce by losing one’s identity. As one’s differentiating originality disappears, one ceases to think for oneself for the sake of thinking like others, which is equivalent to no longer thinking at all... [of] an indisputably higher order than the activity of doing ... is the activity of dreaming” (Nock 1934).

There were other European scientists who contributed serious literary works including the distinguished physiologists, Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777), Claude Bernard (1813-1878), and Charles Jules Henri Nicolle (1866-1936), for example, and several took political posts in the French government on the side, but none spread his interests and activities so broadly as did Richet. His curiosity was boundless, as was his desire to excel in each of his endeavors, but he shifted from one to another at his whim as each seemed important to his goal of human improvement. Except for his study of anaphylaxis and two or three others of his physiological studies Richet failed to fully exploit his talents in either science or literature and thoroughly “wrap up” an undertaking. Nevertheless, Richet’s seemingly diffuse approach to problems in physiology yielded him shrewd and subtle perceptions from which he formulated a unifying concept of health and disease based on adaptation, genetic, physiological and behavioral. As his colleague, Emile Gley (1857-1930) expressed it, “He sees the major functions of the organism as mechanisms of defense.” (Gley 1926). Richet’s clearly purposeful surmise was closely akin to a more recent formulation by H.G. Wolff (1899-1962) who viewed diseases as protective adaptive patterns elicited in response to all manner of assaults, tangible and intangible (Wolff 1953).

Background and Early Development

This multifaceted man who felt a need to improve the world was born to privilege at his parents home 11 rue Louis le Grand in Paris on 25 August 1850. His affluent parents enjoyed a high social position. His father, formal and austere, was driven by a single purpose, to excel as an academic surgeon. His mother, quiet and correct, was a deeply religious Roman Catholic. Young Charles was perhaps more attached to his maternal grandparents than to his parents.

Every Thursday and Sunday there were family dinners at the home of his maternal grandparents, the Renouards, on the rue de Provence. Young Charles was given the special privilege of sitting with the men after dinner as his grandfather and uncle Alfred Renouard smoked their pipes and father Alfred, his cigar. Richet’s first favorite among the books in his grandfather’s large library was the Fables de La Fontaine, but Charles Renouard (1794-1878), who often read to his grandson in Latin, eventually aroused his interest in the classics. As he grew older, Charles not only adopted many of his grandfather’s literary tastes, but his love of the sea and his philosophical views and values as well, especially his democratic convictions and his hatred of war and Napoleon. Richet’s quick mind and beguiling manners made him the favorite of his grandmother as well as his grandfather whom he idolized and from whom he acquired his interest in sailing and his love for Latin and classical literature.

Family Connections

The influence of Richet’s father in the medical faculty gave a powerful boost to his son’s academic ambitions. Beyond that, the prominence of his relatives and forebears was an important asset in enabling him, at a young age, to become an editor of two widely read journals and to operate in a broad arena, moving back and forth from science to humanities.

Richet’s maternal great grandfather, Antoine Auguste Renouard (1765-1854), a manufacturer of gauze and later a full time bibliophile and publisher, had been a prominent figure in Paris during the Convention. Married to the illegitimate daughter of the Marquis de Beauchamp, he had worked successfully for the preservation of precious art objects and books and managed to save many of them from the mass destruction carried out during the violence of the revolution. Richet’s grandfather, Charles Renouard, had himself participated in the strategy for the Revolution of 1830 that overthrew the Bourbon King Charles X. A liberal journalist and specialist in admiralty law, he hated Napoleon. When at age sixteen his performance in the “Concours General,” a competitive examination given to the upperclassmen at the Lycées, earned him an appointment [scholarship] to the Sorbonne, he refused it because the successful candidate was required to give a eulogy of Napoleon’s son, the King of Rome.

Charles Renouard married Adèle Girard, the daughter of a wealthy engineer, Pierre Simon Girard (1765-1836), who was born in Caen into a family of strict Calvinist watchmakers.

A brilliant student, especially in mathematics, Pierre Simon, in 1790, won a prize in engineering offered by the Académie des Sciences. His capabilities were recognized by General Bonaparte, soon to become the Emperor Napoleon. Bonaparte took him along as commander of the brigade of engineers on his conquest of Egypt. Napoleon, with his characteristically patronizing attitude toward other nations, intended to rescue the Egyptians from their ignorance and brutality by exposing them to the intellectual riches of France. At the same time he wanted their ancient civilization to be studied and their arts, literature, science, and architecture to be brought to the attention of the French. He succeeded in establishing the Institut d’Egypte, modeled after the French Academies, but he was more successful in recruiting scientists and engineers for the project than musicians, poets, and artists. In the party with Girard were the chemist Claude Louis Bertholet (1748-1822) the mathematicians Gaspard Monge (1746-1818), Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), and the naturalist, Etienne Geoffroy Saint Hilaire who did early work in embryology. The Institut, established in a place close to Cairo, contained printing presses for both Arabic and Latin types, laboratories for chemistry and physics and a library. Girard was not only a founding member of the Institute d’Egypte but he also became Bonaparte’s minister of the Interior of Egypt. His task was to develop a plan for a canal at Suez and to establish a great port on the Red Sea athwart the shipping route to the Indies as a challenge to Great Britain.¹ After his return to France he was offered an important political post by the future emperor Napoleon. Girard declined, however, and elected to continue as an engineer.

With Napoleon’s support he built a canal from a tributary of the Marne to the Seine at Paris, the Canal de l’Ourcq. Largely for this accomplishment he was elected to membership in the Institut de France. Since the Renouard family were strict Roman Catholics and the Girards were not at all religious, Girard’s daughter Adèle had to take her first communion shortly before her marriage to Charles Renouard. It was their daughter, Eugénie, who married Alfred Richet in 1849.

Charles Richet’s paternal forebears were less socially and politically prominent. His great grandfather, Gaspard Richet (1737-1819), was a descendent of a long line of master locksmiths who had lived for four generations in Burgundy in the vicinity of Dijon. The family had migrated from Champagne where Richet is still a common name. There are also many Richets in Normandy. In 1810 Gaspard’s son, François, at age sixty married as his second wife Victoire Choffez, the daughter of an innkeeper in Luxeuil who had sent her to Dijon to apprentice to a milliner. Charles Richet’s father, Didier Dominique Alfred, born in 1816, was the youngest of two surviving children of François and Victoire. When Alfred was three years old his father died, leaving Victoire barely able to support her children on the income of her millinery shop. Young Alfred had acquired an interest in medicine from a maternal uncle named Lombard, a Navy surgeon who lived near Dijon.² His father Claude-Antoine Lombard (1741-1811) was well known as professor of surgery at l’Ecole de Service de Santé Militaire in Strasbourg under Louis XVI.

Victoire, recognizing the precociousness in her son Alfred, sent him to Paris at age eighteen with a bottle of Dijon Cassis and a monthly allowance of sixty francs. Alfred did well in medical school, achieved the highest grades and, on graduation in 1839, competed successfully for an internship in the Paris hospitals. He further pursued his education in medicine under the tutelage of the famous surgeon Alfred Louis Armand Marie Velpeau (1795-1867). Shortly after graduation from medical school he published original studies on vascular tumors of bone for which he was awarded the “Grand Prix” of the Académie des Sciences in 1851 (Richet, A. 1864). Eager to earn an appointment as Agrégé, faculty associate at the University of Paris, but having limited financial resources, he had to spend most of each day in surgical practice.³ Evenings were devoted to writing a book on surgical anatomy. Finally published in 1855, his Traité Pratique d’Anatomie Chirurgicale was the culmination of long sustained effort. The first edition was so well received that a second edition was required within two years (Richet, A. 1855-57). This important book remained a standard authority on the subject for fifty years. In 1864 Alfred was appointed professor of surgery at the Faculté de Médecine in Paris. In 1865 he was elected to the Académie de Médecine and eventually to the Académie des Sciences. Alfred and Eugénie Renouard married in 1849. The following year Charles Richet was born and two years later his sister, Louise. Richet’s parents and grandparents shared the pattern of upward mobility typical of the age, as the petits bourgeois became grands bourgeois and rose to become the social leaders.

Charles Richet was named for his grandfather, Charles Renouard. His middle name, Robert, was for his father’s close friend, Robert Bazille. Bazille’s wife, Rose, had grown up in the same pension as Adèle Renouard. It was through the Bazilles that Alfred and his wife Eugénie had met.

One day when Mme. Bazille, who was very short, visited his mother, young Charles called out loudly, “Mamma, is she a dwarf?” Later, he wrote in his Mé’moires: “What an ingrate, a triple ingrate, I was. When she died in 1872 she left me, her husband’s namesake, 2000 francs to be contributed to a ‘good cause.’ I gave it to L’Association d’Alsace Lorraine” (Unp).

Despite his effrontery, the little boy quickly became the favorite of his grandmother Adèle who, he acknowledged, indulged him and openly favored him over her other grandchildren.

Growing Up

When he was in the fifth grade Charles’ mother, a devout Catholic, took him to the church of St. Louis d’Antin for his first communion administered by the Abbé Caron. Impressed by that experience, Charles promised the abbé to become a priest although it appeared to him that neither his father nor grandfather had manifested much interest in the church. His mother told young Charles that his father attended mass at the hospital. Charles believed her for a time until his inevitable discovery of the truth and his disillusionment. Grandfather Renouard attended mass but did not go to confession or take communion. Soon Charles himself began to doubt ecclesiastical dogmas and to question the authority of the church. He eventually became a confirmed agnostic. In his Mémoires he wrote that he “had long and painful anguish” as he gradually abandoned the faith of his childhood. Although he expressed tenderness toward his mother, he made little mention of family activities or his relationship with his father.

In sharp contrast to his father’s early pattern of life, Charles’ youthful years were very little devoted to study. Instead, with his cousin Robert Girard and his school friends, he enjoyed parties, plays, boating, fishing, card games, travel and gambling at Monte Carlo (Unp). At home indoors their favorite game was whist until Richet and his friend Emile Bardier invented a new but similar game, Gobefiche, that they considered even more fun. Richet was also enthusiastic about bridge which he continued to play until his death.

Father Alfred found his relaxation and enjoyment in the countryside where he operated with deep interest as a gentleman farmer. Charles, on the other hand, like his grandfather Renouard, loved the sea and had little interest in crops or flowers: “without doubt” he wrote “it is because I lacked patience; it takes too long to grow them” (Unp). Charles did enjoy hunting on his father’s large farm at Lépine in Brie near Mormant (Seine et Marne), but after his father’s death in 1891, he gave up hunting because, as he wrote, “the train ride seemed to provoke severe headaches.”

Richet’s autobiographical writings contain no account of contacts with his paternal grandparents. In fact his grandfather François Richet had died long before his birth and he saw his paternal grandmother Victoire only once before she died in 1864. He did, however, see a good deal of his father’s olde...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Tables
• Preface
• Richet Chronology
• 1. Charles Richet’s Background and the Shaping of His Endeavor 1850-1869
• 2. Postrevolutionary Developments That Influenced Richet and His Work
• 3. Education in Medicine and Science 1869-1878
• 4. The Competitive Young Physiologist 1878-1887
• 5. The Young Professor 1887-1902
• 6. Achievement and Acclaim 1902-1914
• 7. The Dedicated Pacifist and Patriot 1914-1925
• 8. The Final Decade 1925–1935
• 9. Coda
• Photos
• References
• Charles Richet Bibliography
• Index of Proper Names
• Subject Index