[14.] Jan Baptista Van Helmont (1578–1644) was a Flemish physician and chemist. He is noted for having demonstrated the necessity of the balance in chemistry, and for having been among the first to use the word “gas.” His works were published as “Ortus Medicinae,” 1648.[19]
[15.] The author of “Lettres sur la physiognomie” was Jacques Pernety or Pernetti. He was born at Chazelle-sur-Lyon, was for some years canon at Lyons, and died there in 1777.[20]
[16.] Boerhaave. See [Note 78].
[17.] Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698–1759) was a French mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. He supported the Newtonian theory against the Cartesians. In 1740 he became president of the Academy of Berlin. He was the head of the expedition which was sent by Louis XV to measure a degree of longitude in Lapland. Voltaire satirized Maupertuis in the “Diatribe du Docteur Akakia.”[21]
[18.] Luzac sums up the preceding facts by saying: “Here are a great many facts, but what is it they prove? only that the faculties of the soul arise, grow, and acquire strength in proportion as the body does; so that these same faculties are weakened in the same proportion as the body is.... But from all these circumstances it does not follow that the faculty of thinking is an attribute of matter, and that all depends on the manner in which our machine is made, that the faculties of the soul arise from a principle of animal life, from an innate heat or force, from an irritability of the finest parts of the body, from a subtil ethereal matter diffused through it, or in a word, from all these things taken together.”[22]
[19.] “The diverse states of the soul are therefore always correlative with those of the body.” This view is in diametrical opposition to the teaching of Descartes, who says: “The soul is of a nature wholly independent of the body.”[23] Yet Descartes also states that there is an intimate connection between the two. “The Reasonable Soul ... could by no means be educed from the power of matter ... it must be expressly created; and it is not sufficient that it be lodged in the human body, exactly like a pilot in a ship, unless perhaps to move its members, but ... it is necessary for it to be joined and united more closely to the body, in order to have sensations and appetites similar to ours, and thus constitute a real man.”[23]
Holbach later emphasizes this close connection between body and soul, which is so insisted upon by La Mettrie. “If freed from our prejudices we wish to see our soul, or the moving principle which acts in us, we shall remain convinced that it is part of our body, that it can not be distinguished from the body except by an abstraction, that it is but the body itself considered relatively to some of the functions or faculties to which its nature and particular organization make it susceptible. We shall see that this soul is forced to undergo the same changes as the body, that it grows and develops with the body.... Finally we can not help recognizing that at some periods it shows evident signs of weakness, sickness, and death.”[24]
[20.] “Peyronie (François Gigot de la), a French surgeon, born in Montpellier, the fifteenth of January, 1678, died the twenty-fifth of April, 1747. He was surgeon of the hospital of Saint-Eloi de Montpellier and instructor of anatomy to the Faculty; then, in 1704, served in the army. In 1717 he became reversioner of the position of first surgeon to Louis XV; in 1731, steward of the Queen’s palace; in 1735, a doctor of the King; in 1736, first surgeon of the King, and chief of the surgeons of the kingdom. The greatest merit of La Peyronie is for having founded the Academy of Surgery in Paris, and for having gained special protection for surgery and surgeons in France. He wrote little.”[25]
[21.] “Willis, Thomas (1621–1675), English physician, was born at Great Bedwin, Wiltshire, on 27th January, 1621. He studied at Christ Church, Oxford; and when that city was garrisoned for the king he bore arms for the Royalists. He took the degree of bachelor of medicine in 1646, and after the surrender of the garrison applied himself to the practice of his profession. In 1660, shortly after the Restoration, he became Sedleian professor of natural philosophy in place of Dr. Joshua Cross, who was ejected, and the same year he took the degree of doctor of physic.... He was one of the first members of the Royal Society, and was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1664. In 1666, ... he removed to Westminster, on the invitation of Dr. Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury.... He died at St. Martin’s on 11th November, 1675, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.”[26]
[22.] “Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de. Born at Rouen, France, February 11, 1657; died at Paris, January 9, 1757. A French advocate, philosopher, poet, and miscellaneous writer. He was the nephew (through his mother) of Corneille, and was ‘one of the last of the Précieux, or rather the inventor of a new combination of literature and gallantry which at first exposed him to not a little satire’ (Saintsbury). He wrote ‘Poésies pastorales’ (1688), ‘Dialogues des morts’ (1683), ‘Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes’ (1686), ‘Histoire des oracles’ (1687), ‘Eloges des académiciens’ (delivered 1690–1740).”[27]