A great observer is in reality a poet who imagines and creates. The microscope, the magnifying glass, the scalpel, are as it were the strings of a lyre. "The felicitous and fruitful hypothesis which constitutes scientific invention is a gift of sentiment" in the words of Claude Bernard; and of this king of physiology, who commenced by proving himself in works of pure imagination, and whose genius finally took for its theme the manifold variations of living flesh, of him too may we not say that he has explored the labyrinths of life with "the torch of poetry in his hand"?
Similarly, do not the harmonious sequences which run through all the admirable discoveries of Pasteur give us the sensation of a veritable and gigantic poem?
In Fabre also it seems that the passion which he brings to all his patient observations is in itself truly creative: "his heart beats with emotion, the sweat drips from his brow to the soil, making mortar of the dust"; he forgets food and drink, and "thus passes hours of oblivion in the happiness of learning." I have seen him in his laboratory studying the spawning of the bluebottle, when I, at his side, could scarcely support the horrible stench which rose from the putrefying adders and lumps of meat; he, however, was oblivious of the frightful odour, and his face was inundated with smiles of delight.
Intelligence, then, must here be the servant of feeling and intuition; a kind of primitive faculty, mysterious and instinctive, which alone makes a great naturalist like Fabre, a great historian like Michelet, a great physician like Boherhaave or Bretonneau.
These last are not always the most scholarly nor the most learned nor the most patient, but they are those who possess in a high degree that special vision, that gift, properly speaking poetic, which is known as the clinical eye, which at the first glance perceives and confirms the diagnosis in all its detail.
Fabre has a mind propitious to such processes; and if, by chance, circumstances had directed his attention to medicine, that science which is based upon an abundant provision of facts, but in which good sense and a kind of divination play a still wider part, there is no doubt that he would have been capable of becoming a shining light in this new arena.
He was full of admiration for that other illustrious Vauclusian, François Raspail [(7/16.)], whose medical genius anticipated Pasteur and all the conceptions of modern medicine. It would seem that he found in him his own temper, his own fashion of seeing and representing things. He loved Raspail's books and his prescriptions, full of reason and a most judicious good sense, distrusting for himself and for his family the complicated formulae and cunning remedies of an art too considered and still unproved. At Carpentras, while his first-born, Émile, was hovering between life and death, and the physician who came to see him, "being at the end of his resources," did nothing more for him and soon ceased to come, thinking that the child would not last till the morrow, Fabre flew to the works of Raspail.
"I searched to discover what his malady was. I found it, and he was treated day and night accordingly. To‑day he is convalescent; and his appetite has returned. I believe he is saved, and I shall say, like Ambroise Paré, 'I have nursed him; God has cured him.'" [(7/17.)]
The episode which he relates, when, at the primary school of Avignon, a retort had just burst, "spurting in all directions its contents of vitriol," right in the midst of the suddenly interrupted chemistry lesson, and when, thanks to his prompt action, he saved the sight of one of his comrades, does honour to his initiative and presence of mind. [(7/18.)]
While "all physicians should bow before the facts which he excels in discovering" [(7/19.)], he has also been able to make direct application of the marvels of entomology to some of the problems of hygiene and medicine. He has shown that the irritant poison secreted by certain caterpillars, "which sets the fingers which handle them on fire," is nothing but a waste product of the organism, a derivative of uric acid; he does not hesitate to perform painful experiments on himself in order to furnish the proof of his theory; and he explains thus the curious cases of dermatitis which are often observed among silkworm-breeders. [(7/20.)] He proves the uselessness of our meat-safes of metallic gauze, intended to preserve meat against contamination, and the efficacy of a mere envelope of paper, not only to preserve meat from flies, but also our garments from the clothes-moth. [(7/21.)] He recommends the curious Provençal recipe, which consists in boiling suspected mushrooms in salt and water before eating them. Finally he suggests to members of the medical profession that they might perhaps extract heroic remedies from these treacherous vegetables. [(7/22.)]