Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Darlus Thiroux d’Arconville and Community during the French Enlightenment

Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Darlus Thiroux d’Arconville (1720–1805) was a key figure in a community of elite scientists in early modern Paris. ¹ This community was composed of anatomists, physicians, botanists, chemists, and pharmacists, and included Pierre-Joseph Macquer (1718–1784), Bernard de Jussieu (1699–1777), Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743–1794), Antoine François de Fourcroy (1755–1809), Bernard-Germain de Lacépède (1756–1825), François Poulletier de la Salle (1719–1788), François-Guillaume Rouelle (1703–1770), and Jean-Baptiste Sénac (1693–1770). ² As the historian Roger Hahn states: “These men composed what was commonly known in the eighteenth century as the ‘Republic of Science’ referring to the loosely knit community of scientists, most of whom were members of the French Academy of Sciences in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” ³ That Academy refused membership to women; women therefore had to develop alternate ways to contribute to scientific conversation and advancement. They networked in private salons in their homes and conducted experiments in private laboratories, often also in their homes. ⁴ In this essay, I will examine how one such woman, Madame d’Arconville, became a vital part of the scientific community through collaboration and dialogue with her male counterparts and through her own publications and translations in chemistry and anatomy. I will also provide an example of how scientific research in eighteenth-century France was not limited to the Academy’s formal institutional framework.

Biographical Sketch

The details of d’Arconville’s life are not common knowledge, particularly to those outside the world of French studies, despite her significant contributions to science, medicine, history, poetry, biography, and essays during the mid-eighteenth century. ⁵ d’Arconville did not limit herself to the humanities, but in true Enlightenment fashion translated and authored scientific oeuvres with a focus on putrefaction and anatomy. First, with anatomist and surgeon Jean-Joseph Süe, she translated, illustrated, and annotated Alexander Monro’s (primus) classic textbook, The Anatomy of the Human Bones and Nerves. ⁶ Second, she translated Peter Shaw’s Chemical Lectures, published in Paris by J.T. Hérissant with extensive notes and corrections to his work. ⁷ Finally, she wrote the lengthy 1766 Essai pour servir à l’histoire de la putrefaction(Essay to serve the history of putrefaction). ⁸ She also published Mélanges (Miscellanea), a collection of her translations of papers on anatomy, medicine, and botany by leaders in the fields, including Monro, from the 1720 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. ⁹

Recently, d’Arconville has been the subject of several scholarly articles in French and brief biographical notices in English; however, much remains to be studied, especially with respect to her interactions with established male scientists of her day. ¹⁰ The first and only book dedicated to her life and contributions is the 2011 Madame d’Arconville, 1720–1805: Une Femme de Lettres et de Sciences au Siècle des Lumières (A woman of letters and science in the Enlightenment), edited by Patrice Bret and Brigitte Van Tiggelen, and the product of a 10 June 2010 conference at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris. ¹¹ The journée d’étude and the resulting volume occurred shortly after the University of Ottawa’s Morisset Library’s Special Collections and Archives purchased twelve lost volumes of d’Arconville’s papers written between 1801 and 1805. ¹² The publication, based primarily upon a selection of the manuscripts, has kindled a new interest in this remarkably prodigious woman.

d’Arconville was born Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Darlus on 17 October 1720 to Françoise Gaudicher, the daughter of a notary from Angers, and government financier and king’s secretary André-Guillaume Darlus d’Arconville. ¹³ After losing her mother at age four and a half, the young Geneviève was raised primarily by, in her words, “une gouvernante incapable de m’élever” (a governess incapable of raising me). ¹⁴ Geneviève’s education focused on domestic rather than academic skills; she later recounted that although her father loved her tenderly, he did not attend to her schooling, so she did not learn to read until she was eight years old and then only because she asked her father to be taught letters. ¹⁵ At fourteen she married Louis-Lazare Thiroux d’Arconville, a wealthy councilor and later president of the Paris parlement and the Chambre des Enquêtes (French chamber of inquiries), and by twenty she had given birth to three sons born in 1736, 1738, and 1739. ¹⁶ Her eldest, Louis Thiroux de Crosne, a magistrate, intendant of both Normandy and Lorraine, and later a police officer, went to the guillotine in 1794. ¹⁷ Her others, Louis Lazare Thiroux de Gervillier and Charles Thiroux de Mondésir, were military men. ¹⁸

In early adulthood, d’Arconville led a life typical of a modestly enlightened woman: she ran a household, held a salon, read novels, and attended the theatre and opera. ¹⁹ At her salon, she received leading men of letters, science, and history, including François-Marie Arouet, commonly known by his pen name as Voltaire; the poet Jean-Baptiste Gresset; philosophes Denis Diderot Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, and Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes; medievalist and philologist Jean-Baptiste de la Curne de Sainte-Palaye; and chemists François Poulletier de la Salle, Pierre-Joseph Macquer, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, and Antoine-François Fourcroy. ²⁰ Early nineteenth-century biographer Hippolyte de La Porte characterizes d’Arconville as an ideal salonnière with outstanding social skills, although she had a tendency to control conversations in areas in which she had expertise. ²¹ De La Porte notes that she “obtint une sorte de célébrité dans le dix-huitième siècle comme une femme aimable et savant” (gained a certain notoriety during the eighteenth century as an amiable and learned woman). ²² All of this would change when, at age twenty-two, d’Arconville almost died from small pox. She recovered, but she no longer held salons and dressed like a much older woman. ²³ She renounced theatre-going, which she had loved to the point of seeing Voltaire’s Mérope eleven times in a row. ²⁴ She instead resolved to pursue an academic education starting with the study of English, Latin, Italian, and German. ²⁵ The expertise she developed in foreign languages, English in particular, would prove fruitful for her later publications, many of which were translations of scientific texts by English physicians.

The Community of the Jardin Royal des Plantes

Post-illness, d’Arconville attained a level of knowledge well above the norm for women of her class and century, and this despite her poor childhood education. After gaining competency in a number of languages, in the early 1740s d’Arconville began to frequent the Jardin Royal des Plantes, commonly called the Jardin du Roi (Royal botanical gardens), founded in 1626 by Louis XIIII and a leading center of scientific learning, particularly in chemistry, medicine, and pharmacy, where she studied natural sciences and interacted with prominent men of science. ²⁶ At the Jardin du Roi, the king’s physicians taught future doctors and apothecaries; here, courses focused on botany, anatomy, and chemistry were open to lay persons, including women from 1740. To reach as broad an audience as possible, courses were free, paid for by the monarchy, delivered in French rather than Latin, and lacked examinations and diplomas. ²⁷ Often there were five to six hundred persons in attendance, including distinguished Enlightenment philosophes including Diderot and Rousseau. ²⁸

The Jardin du Roi was a unique opportunity for d’Arconville to learn outside the home, as formal education was closed to women. She took advantage of it by studying physics, anatomy, botany, natural history, and chemistry. Notably, she studied with chemist Guillaume-François Rouelle, who was a démonstrateur en chimie (chemistry demonstrator) at the Jardin du Roi from 1742 and delivered courses there until 1768. ²⁹ Rouelle taught a number of famous eighteenth-century chemists, most notably Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier. ³⁰ The demonstrator’s role was to reinforce the material taught by the lecturers, who at this time were chemists Louis-Claude Bourdelin (1696–1777), court physician to Marie-Antoinette; Paul-Jacques Malouin (1701–1778); and Pierre-Joseph Macquer; Rouelle was especially popular with his students because of his entertaining lectures. ³¹ Concerning Rouelle, d’Arconville lauded “l’étendue de ses conaissances, la supériorité de son génie, son assiduité et l’amour qu’il a pour la chymie” (the extent of his knowledge, the superiority of his genius, his diligence and his love for chemistry), and characterized him as a “savant qui possède des qualités aussi éminentes et aussi rares” (a savant who possesses rare and eminent qualities). ³² d’Arconville was not alone among eighteenth-century women to benefit from the new opportunities for education at the Jardin du Roi. Writers Marie-Jeanne Roland and Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis also attended lectures. ³³ Madame de Genlis, a younger contemporary of d’Arconville (1746–1830), studied anatomy and copied her interest in learning, especially in subjects such as chemistry. ³⁴ de Genlis frequented the Jardin du Roi where she met “M. Thouin l’un des premiers botanistes de l’Europe” (Mr. Thouin one of Europe’s foremost gardeners and a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences). ³⁵

With prestigious academies – the sources of knowledge, power, and networking – closed to women, the Jardin du Roi gave d’Arconville not only educational instruction but also a venue in which to form key friendships that would determine the future of her scientific writings. ³⁶ Her social and intellectual life revolved around many famous personalities, the greatest scientists of the Enlightenment, in particular chemists Lavoisier and Fourcroy, and physician Macquer, under whom she studied and with whom she corresponded. She also corresponded with François Poulletier de la Salle, the discoverer of cholesterol, on aspects of putrefaction. ³⁷ With her community of teachers and mentors who were all men, ³⁸ d’Arconville created what Margaret Carlyle calls a “private research team.” ³⁹ This collaborative effort would eventually lead to the translation and correction of Shaw’s and Monro’s works in addition to the production of her own Essai pour servir à l’histoire de la putrefaction. ⁴⁰

With the Jardin’s scientists, and botanist Bernard de Jussieu in particular, d’Arconville initially studied plants (what she called “agriculture”) because “mon goût pour la chymie me fit naître l’envie d’acquérir quelques connaissances en agriculture et surtout en botanique, parce qu’elles ont de l’analogue avec la chymie” (my interest in chemistry led me to acquire an introductory knowledge of agriculture, botany in particular, because these subjects were analogous to chemistry). ⁴¹ Jussieu, professor of botany and director of the Jardin du Roi from 30 September 1722 to 1775, ⁴² was a key to d’Arconville’s knowledge of organic chemistry; he also invented a method of plant classification that was particularly helpful to her studies. Commenting on Jussieu’s work in the context of the nature of coral in the preface to her major scientific work, d’Arconville explained that “M. Bernard de Jussieu, fait pour porter la lumière sur tous les objets qu’il embrasse, a confirmé les expériences de M. Peyissonel, par ses savants observations, & le doute a fait place à l’évidence” (Mr. Bernard de Jussieu. who sheds light on everything he embraces, has confirmed the experiments of Mr. Peyissonel by his clever observations, and his questioning of the evidence). ⁴³

Jussieu’s generosity in sharing his knowledge of botany and in supplying d’Arconville’s arboretum at her country home at Crosne ⁴⁴ (today a suburb of Paris) with exotic plants led to her observations about plant decay. ⁴⁵ In that arboretum, d’Arconville discovered that certain substances that impeded putrefaction existed in the gastric juices of plant roots, except in myrtle. In this flowering plant, she noted that the flesh took more than six months to decompose and was thus of a superior substance. ⁴⁶

d’Arconville’s examination of plant decomposition led her to more general studies in chemistry. In addition to her work with Rouelle, she studied with Sénac, the king’s first physician, and with Macquer. ⁴⁷ A former student of Rouelle, Macquer accomplished pioneering work in chemistry as one of the first to distinguish the discipline from pharmacy and the practical arts such as dyes and porcelain. ⁴⁸ Macquer’s recognition of chemistry as a science may well have originated with his job as technical director of the Sèvres porcelain factory. ⁴⁹ Author of a respected Dictionnaire de Chimie (Dictionary of chemistry), ⁵⁰ Macquer did much to enhance d’Arconville’s scientific career. He encouraged her work and introduced her to the scientific community of Paris, including important eighteenth-century scientists such as the naturalist Bernard-Germain Lacépède and the chemist Antoine Fourcroy. ⁵¹ d’Arconville dedicated her major scientific publication, Essai pour servir à l’histoire de la putrefaction, to Macquer. In an “Épître Dédicatoire” (Dedicatory epistle) that precedes the text, she describes her debt to him as a friend and mentor: “C’est à mon Ami, c’est à mon Maître, que j’ose offrir cette ouvrage quelque peu digne qu’il soit de lui … Les leçons du maître en devirent plus efficaces parce que l’ami m’était cher.” (I dare to dedicate this work to my friend and master however unworthy I am of him … My master’s lessons became more effective because he was a dear friend.) ⁵² d’Arconville’s correspondence with Macquer further underscores their pupil-master relationship. In one letter, she writes: “J’ai mille grâces à vous rendre Monsieur, non pas des éloges que vous voulez bien me faire, car je sens que je les dois qu’à votre indulgence, mais de la peine que vous avez bien voulu prendre de revoir la partie de mon ouvrage que vous m’avez renvoyée hier.” (I have a thousand thanks to give you, Sir, not for the praise which you have bestowed on me, because that I feel I owe to your spoiling of me, but for the trouble you have kindly taken to revise the part of my book you sent me yesterday.) ⁵³ Clearly, d’Arconville recognized the debt she owed to Macquer as a key individual in her community of scholars.

d’Arconville’s name and works were well-known and well-received within community of scientists, her name and works. Fourcroy, the greatest chemist of the age, praised d’Arconville for her experimental work on putrefaction and placed it on the same level as studies on decomposition by Stephen Hales (1677–1761), John Pringle (1707–1782), David MacBride (1726–1778), and Antoine Baumé (1728–1804). On d’Arconville, Fourcroy commented that “une française qui s’est illustrée par un grand nombre de productions, d’esprit, notamment par la traduction du cours de chimie de Shaw, a donné une nombreusue suite de recherches expérimentales sur le même sujet” (a French woman has distinguished herself through the production of a large number of intellectual works, including the translation of Shaw’s chemistry course, which has led to much experimental research on the same topic). ⁵⁴ Fourcroy included d’Arconville’s explanation of decomposition in his own discussion of the different conditions under which decomposition occurs. ⁵⁵ He particularly supported women’s aptitude for the sciences in general and for chemistry in particular, and noted that “pour le Bonheur commun, qu’elles sont capables des efforts nécessaires pour cultiver avec succès les sciences” (for the common good, they are capable of the effort necessary to successfully cultivate the sciences). ⁵⁶

Macquer and d’Arconville: Enlightened Chemistry

In the true spirit of the Enlightenment, d’Arconville intended her works to be useful to humanity, and to this end Macquer advised her to focus on the links between chemistry and medicine – specifically, to center her research on infections in wounds and on gangrene. Tissue decay, prevalent in wounded soldiers, involved decomposition or putrefaction; at the time, it was attributed to the principle of infection, but the science of its origin was still ignored. Without the comprehension of the complications of war wounds, researchers attempted to identify substances that could act as antidotes, and this search was the main reason Macquer asked d’Arconville to translate Shaw’s Chemical Lectures. Her resulting French translation of the work was published in 1759 as Leçons de chymie, propres à perfectionner la physique, le commerce et les arts and included extensive notes and commentaries that transformed the work into her own. In addition to revising and annotating Shaw’s work, d’Arconville provided a ninety-four-page preface titled “Discours Préliminaire,” itself a noteworthy contribution to applied chemistry. In this preface, d’Arconville wrote that the volume included a history of chemistry and explained its types and goals, and commented on chemistry’s relationship to medicine and pharmacy, stressing the need for physicians to understand the intricacies of pharmacy in order to successfully practice medicine. ⁵⁷ She surveyed the contributions made by chemists such as Joachim Becher, Hermann Boerhaave, Georg-Ernst Stahl, Nicolas Lémery, and Etienne-François Geoffrey. She also referred to her own experiments, which would later appear in her Essai pour server à l’histoire de la putréfaction.

Shaw delivered public lectures from 1731 to 1733 in London and Scarborough and focused on a wide variety of subjects including heat, air, earth, waters, solvents, fermentation and putrefaction, analytical chemistry (animal, vegetable and, mineral), wines and spirits, and oils and salts, with each lecture supported by his own experiments. ⁵⁸ Primarily, Shaw concentrated on applied chemistry in beer- and wine-making and in mining, and his status as a scientist passed from amateur to professional with the publication of his Chemical Lectures. ⁵⁹ While chemistry as a subject did not attract most women of the Enlightenment, d’Arconville was qualified to comment on it by virtue of her education at the Jardin du Roi and her close connections with some of France’s leading scientists of the day.

Macquer did not only want d’Arconville to translate Shaw’s work; he also wanted her to verify Sir John Pringle’s recent study on putrefaction. Her Essai pour server à l’histoire de la putrefaction, published seven years later, was the result of this request. Pringle was general physician to the armies in England ⁶⁰ and the results of his research had already been published by the Royal Society of London. ⁶¹ Pringle presented seven lectures to the Royal Society between 1750 and 1752, in which he provided a list of septic substances that favored decomposition and antiseptic substances that fought decomposition. According to Pringle, the dried bark of the root of the cinchona tree, which contains the source of quinine, ⁶² possessed a great power “not only to preserve animal substances but to prevent them from corruption as well as re constituting them to their original state once they had putrefied.” ⁶³ Pringle would publish his findings of substances that made the best antiseptics – camphor, myrrh, wormwood, chamomile, and roses – in Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Camp and Garrison (1752). ⁶⁴ d’Arconville’s comments on Pringle’s experiments are lengthy and substantive, pointing to her sophisticated knowledge of chemicals. With respect to Pringle’s observations on septic and antiseptic substances, she noted the power of cinchona in the preservation of animal matter. Similar to Pringle, she did not associate putrefaction with germs, although the relationship between fermentation, decomposition, and contagious diseases and the existence of microscopic organisms had been discussed in medical texts since the sixteenth century. ⁶⁵ However, her results were not always the same as Pringle’s, especially concerning chamomile.

d’Arconville never met Pringle; however, she acknowledged her significant debt to him as one of the few scientists at this time to conduct research on putrefaction. She praised his “excellent ouvrage qui prouve les connaissances profondes … qui peut contribuer à perfectionner l’art de guérir” (excellent work which proves the profound knowledge … that could contribute to perfecting the art of healing). ⁶⁶ At the same time, she also stated: “J’ose même advancer qu’il s’est trompé quelquefois: mais il n’est pas surprenant que dans une matière aussi neuve, l’erreur accompagne, & souvent même précéde la vérité” (I even dare to advance that he makes mistakes sometimes: but it is not surprising in a subject that is fairly new, that error accompanies and often even precedes truth). ⁶⁷

Conclusion

d’Arconville’s scientific contributions lend themselves to two final observations. First, her extensive scientific research and writings attest to the fact that women could and did participate in the male-dominated realm of eighteenth-century science despite facing numerous societal and institutional barriers. In particular, d’Arconville’s success as a woman of science was recognized by male contemporaries who acknowledged her work on putrefaction and chemistry in their publications. Second, her collaborations and correspondence with the leading teachers and mentors at the Jardin du Roi point to the critical importance of scientific work outside the Academy. These contributions complemented and completed institutionalized learning and work that was arguably made possible by the energy and innovation of women like d’Arconville who had to trace their own path through the salon, around the Academy, and into the laboratory.

1. This essay is based on a paper presented at the Women and Community in the Ancien Régime: Traditional and New Media conference, held 18–20 June 2014 at Barnard College in New York City. Thanks to Laurie Postlewate, Christine McWebb, and Lori J. Walters for their insightful suggestions and significant revisions to this manuscript.[↑]
2. d’Arconville corresponded with several men of science including her mentor, chemist Pierre-Joseph Macquer, between 1770 and 1778. See Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) Département des manuscrits, Fr. 12305, fols. 19–25.[↑]
3. Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 35.[↑]
4. In a recent study of Madame Dupiéry’s contributions to astronomy, Isabelle Lémonon suggests that “a fair share of women’s ‘invisible’ work has been performed outside the institution of academic and professional science.” See Isabelle Lémonon, “Gender and Space in Enlightenment Science: Madame Dupiéry’s Scientific Work and Network,” in Domesticity in the Making of Modern Science, eds. Donald L. Opitz, Stephan Bergwick, and Brigitte Van Tiggelen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 3.[↑]
5. d’Arconville authored at least seventy published works, including novels, poetry, history, biography, science, and numerous translations. Her writings circulated widely in literary reviews during the 1770s. Karyna Szmurlo, “Thiroux d’Arconville, Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Darlus (1720–1805),” in The Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature, ed. Eva Martin Sartori (Wesport: Greenwood Press, 1999), 529. The newly acquired unpublished works in the University of Ottawa collection add up to well over a thousand pages.[↑]
6. Alexander Monro (primus) (1697–1767) was a Scottish anatomist and professor at Edinburgh University. See Osmond C. Wu, Sunil Manjila, Nima Malakooti, and Alan R. Cohen, “The Remarkable Medical Lineage of the Monro Family: Contributions of Alexander Primus, Secundus, and Tertius,” Journal of Neurosurgery 116, no. 6 (June 2012): 1337–46. Alexander Monro, Traité d’ostéologie, traduit de l’anglais de M. Monro, professeur d’anatomie et de la Société Royale d’Edimbourg, où l’on a ajouté des planches en taille-douce qui représentent au naturel tous les os de l’adulte et du foeutus, avec leurs explications (Paris: G. Cavelier, 1759).[↑]
7. Peter Shaw, Leçons de chymie propres à perfectionner la physique, le commerce et les arts, traduites de l’anglais (Paris: J. Thérissant, 1759). Shaw (1694–1763), physician, writer, chemistry lecturer, and translator of chemical and medical texts, was first physician to King George II of England. See Jan V. Golinski, “Peter Shaw: Chemistry and Communication in Augustan England,” Ambix: Journal for the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 30, no. 1 (March 1983): 19. According to Golinski, Shaw pioneered public lectures in chemistry in England and had a considerable following throughout the later eighteenth century. See Jan Golinski, “Chemistry,” in The Cambridge History of Science, ed. Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 4: 379.[↑]
8. d’Arconville, Essai pour server à l’histoire de la putréfaction, par le traducteur des Leçons de Chymie de M. Shaw, premier médecin du Roi d’Angleterre (Paris: P. Fr. Didot le Jeune, 1766). [↑]
9. See the list of papers in Patrice Bret and Brigitte Van Tiggelen, “Corpus des Oeuvres de Madame Arconville,” in Madame d’Arconville (1720–1805): Une femme de lettres et de sciences au siècle des Lumières (Paris: Hermann, 2011), 164–5. This collection of translated works was published in 1775.[↑]
10. See Adeline Gargam, “Savoirs mondains, savoirs savants: Les femmes et leurs cabinets de curiosités au siècle des Lumières,” Genre & Histoire 5 (Fall 2009): genrehistoire.revues.org/899; Elisabeth Bardez, “Au fil de ses ouvrages anonymes, Madame Thiroux d’Arconville, femme de lettres et chimiste éclairée,” Revue d’Histoire de la Pharmacie no. 363 (2009): 255–66; Jean-Pierre Poirier, “Marie Geneviève Charlotte Thiroux d’Arconville née d’Arlus (1720–1805): Femme de lettres et chimiste,” in Histoire des femmes de science en France du moyen age à la révolution (Paris: Pygmalion, 2002), 265–72; Elisabeth Badinter, Les passions intellectuelles (Paris: Fayard, 2002), 2: 251–4. Earlier studies include Mélina Lipinska, Les femmes et le progrès des sciences médicales (Paris: Masson, 1930), 63–71. In English, see Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 195–7, 247–50. More recently, see Margaret Carlyle, “Invisible Assistants and Translated Texts: d’Arconville and Practical Chemistry in Enlightenment France,” in Women and Science, 17th Century to Present: Pioneers, Activists and Protaganists, eds. Donna Spalding Andréolle and Véronique Molinari (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 19–34; Julie Candler Hayes, “From Anonymity to Autobiography: Mme d’Arconville’s Self-Fashionings,” The Romanic Review 103, no. 3–4 (2012): 381–97.[↑]
11. The conference, Journée d’étude: Les langues de l’échange savant; Mme d’Arconville, femme de lettres, femme de sciences et traductrice au siècle des Lumières, was organized by Patrice Bret of the Centre Alexandre Koyré – CRHST, Paris, and Brigitte Van Tiggelen of Mémosciences/Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve.[↑]
12. For a detailed list of the contents of each volume, see Bret and van Tiggelen, “Corpus des Oeuvres de Madame d’Arconville,” 151–68.[↑]
13. Hippolyte de La Porte, “Notices I : Madame Thiroux d’Arconville,” in Notices et observations à l’occasion de quelques femmes de la société du dix-huitième siècle (Paris : H. Fournier, 1835), 14–39 ; Marie-Laure Girou-Swiderski, “La présidente d’Arconville, une femme des Lumières?” in Madame d’Arconville, 21.[↑]
14. Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Darlus Thiroux-d’Arconville, “Histoire de mon enfance,” in Pensées et réflexions morales 3: 259–60, 1800–05, University of Ottawa Archives and Special Collections. Her nephew, a physician and botany professor who wrote a short biographical notice, recalled that his brilliant aunt had received a housekeeper’s education. Pierre Henri Hippolyte Bodard de la Jacopière, Cours de botanique médicale comparée (Paris: Méquignon l’Aîné, 1810), 1: xxvi.[↑]
15. Patrice Bret, “Préface,” in Madame d’Arconville, 8. [↑]
16. “Repères biographiques,” in Madame d’Arconville, 147; Candler Hayes, “From Anonymity to Autobiography,” 388.[↑]
17. de La Porte, Notices et Observations, 23; Girou-Swiderski, “La présidente d’Arconville,” 22–3. Girou-Swiderski notes that this son was involved in the Calas affair and collaborated with Voltaire in his defence.[↑]
18. Marie-Laure Girou-Swiderski, “Ecrire à tout prix: La Présidente Thiroux d’Arconville, polygraphe (1720–1805),” Les écrits féminins non-fictionnels du Moyen Âge au XVIIIe siècle: Un inventaire raisonné, aix1.uottawa.ca/~margirou/Perspectives/XVIIIe/arconvil.htm.[↑]
19. de La Porte, Notices et Observations, 14; Van Tiggelen, “Entre anonymat et traduction: la carrière d’une femme en sciences,” in Madame d’Arconville, 99.[↑]
20. Girou-Swiderski, “La présidente d’Arconville,” 24.[↑]
21. de La Porte, Notices et Observations, 15–16.[↑]
22. Ibid., 23.[↑]
23. Ibid., 14. [↑]
24. Ibid., 15.[↑]
25. Adeline Gargam, “La Chair, l’os et les éléments: L’heureuse fécondité de la traduction scientifique au XVIIIe siècle: le cas de Marie-Geneviève Thiroux d’Arconville,” in Les Rôles transfrontaliers joués par les femmes dans la construction de l’Europe, ed. Guyonne Leduc (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012), 61.[↑]
26. Guy de la Brosse, one of Louis XIII’s physicians, created the Jardin du Roi to provide medicinal plants to physicians and students for research purposes. To this end, the gardens housed residences for staff, laboratories, and lecture theaters for teaching functions. See David J. Sturdy, Science and Social Status: The Members of the Académie des Sciences (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1995), 6–7. The exact date that d’Arconville began her lectures is not known; however, she would have attended courses there between 1742 and 1747, as those are the dates that one of her primary tutors, Guillaume-François Rouelle, was employed. See Elisabeth Bardez, “Mme d’Arconville a-t-elle sa place dans la chimise du XVIIIe siècle?,” in Madame d’Arconville Moraliste et Chimiste au Siècle des Lumières Édition Critique, ed. Marc André Bernier et Marie-Laure Girou Swiderski (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2016), 164. For more on the Jardin du Roi, see Andrew Cunningham, The Anatomist Anatomis’d: An Experimental Discipline in Enlightenment Europe (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 98–9.[↑]
27. See the second article of the Projet de règlemens pour le Jardin des Plantes et le Cabinet d’histoire naturelle cited in Le Jardin du roi et le collége royal: Dans l’enseignement des sciences au XVIII siècle, eds. Yves Laissus and Jean Torlais (Paris: Hermann, 1986), 300n1.[↑]
28. Cunningham, The Anatomist Anatomis’d, 98, 100; Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex?, 248; Sturdy, Science and Social Status, 8; Jan Golinski, “Chemistry,” 379.[↑]
29. de La Porte, 32; d’Arconville, “Histoire de ma littérature,” cited in Elisabeth Bardez, “Madame d’Arconville et les sciences: Raison ou résonance,” in Madame d’Arconville, 39.[↑]
30. Pierre Lemay and Ralph E. Oesper, “The Lectures of Guillaume François Rouelle,” Journal of Chemical Education 31, no. 7 (1954): 338.[↑]
31. Sturdy, Science and Social Status, 400–1; Lemay and Oesper, “The Lectures of Guillaume François Rouelle,” 339.[↑]
32. d’Arconville, “Discours préliminaire,” in Peter Shaw, Leçons de chymie, iv.[↑]
33. See Siân Reynolds, Marriage and Revolution, Monsieur & Madame Roland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 69–70.[↑]
34. Stéphanie Félicité Genlis, Mémoires inédits de madame la comtesse de Genlis, pour server à l’histoire des dix-huitième et dix-neuvième siècles (Paris et Londres: Chez Colburn, 1825–1826), 1: 336–8.[↑]
35. Genlis, Mémoires, 2: 256. André Thouin (1747–1824) was a French botanist and a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences. See Hahn, Anatomy of a Scientific Institution, 113, 159n.[↑]
36. Bardez, “Madame d’Arconville et les sciences,” 21.[↑]
37. Similar to d’Arconville, Poulletier worked on bile from 1754 to 1755. Bardez, “Au fil de ses ouvrages anonymes, Madame Thiroux d’Arconville,” 259n28.[↑]
38. d’Arconville scholars note her dislike of women whom she characterized as coquettes and flirts. Nina Rattner Gelbart observes that d’Arconville makes disparaging remarks about women throughout her writings: “Splendeur et squelettes: La traduction anatomique de Madame Thiroux d’Arconville,” in Madame d’Arconville, 65.[↑]
39. Margaret Carlyle, “‘Femme de sciences, femme d’esprit’: Le traducteur des Leçons de Chymie,” in Madame d’Arconville, 80.[↑]
40. D’Arconville, “Histoire de ma littérature,” in Pensées et réflexions morales, 5: 197–9.[↑]
41. Ibid.[↑]
42. In 1775, Jussieu was assisted by his nephew, Antoine Laurent Jussieu. See Le Jardin du Roi et le collège royal, 333.[↑]
43. d’Arconville, “Préface,” in Essai pour servir à l’histoire, 5.[↑]
44. d’Arconville inherited the seigneurie of Crosne from her father in 1749. She sold the estate in 1766. After selling Crosne, she purchased a property in Meudon where she lived after the death of her husband. She often spent time in Paris to be on her own, where she lived in the Marais at Impasse Pecquet. See Bardez, “Madame d’Arconville, et les sciences,” 40n34.[↑]
45. d’Arconville, “Histoire de ma littérature,” 5: 190.[↑]
46. d’Arconville, “Préface,” in Essai pour servir à l’histoire, xxvi–xxvii.[↑]
47. Bardez, “Madame d’Arconville, et les sciences,” 258; William A. Smeaton, “Macquer et la médecine,” Revue d’histoire de la pharmacie 24, no. 235 (2009): 251–4.[↑]
48. W.H.G. Armitage, “The Jardin du Roi: Seedbed of Sciences,” British Medical Journal 2, no. 5207 (22 October 1960): 1232.[↑]
49. Jean-Pierre Poirier, “Marie Geneviève Charlotte Thiroux d’Arconville née d’Arlus,” 266; Claude Viel, “L’influence de P.J. Macquer sur les chimistes français de son temps,” Bulletin de l’union des physiciens 86, no. 746 (July–Aug.–Sept. 1992): 1113.[↑]
50. Dictionnaire de chimie: Contenant la théorie et la pratique de cette science son application à la physique, à la histoire naturelle, à la médecine & à l’économie animale: Avec l’explication détaillée de la vertu & de la manière d’agir des médicamens chymiques, et les principes fondamentaux des arts, manufactures & métiers dépendans de la chymie¸ 2 vols. (Paris: Lacombe, 1766).[↑]
51. “Arconville, Geneviève Charlotte d’ (1720–1805),” in Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie and Joy Harvey, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century (London: Routledge, 2000), 1: 49.[↑]
52. d’Arconville, “Épitre dédicatoire à mon ami,” in Essai pour servir à l’histoire.[↑]
53. Letter dated 17 July 1770 from d’Arconville to Macquer, “Correspondance du Chimiste P.J. Macquer,” BNF Fr. MS 12305, fol. 21.[↑]
54. Antoine-François de Fourcroy, “Article X, De la putréfaction considérée comme propriété caractéristique des substances animales,” in Système de connaissances chimiques et leurs applications aux phénomènes de la nature et de l’art (Paris: Baudoin, 1801), 9: 96.[↑]
55. Fourcroy, “Article X, De la putréfaction,” 102.[↑]
56. Antoine François de Fourcroy, “Introduction, ” Bibliothèque Universelle des Dames: Principes de Chimie (Paris: Cuchet, 1787), xix–xx.[↑]
57. d’Arconville, “Préface,” Leçons de chymie, vi.[↑]
58. Golinski, “Peter Shaw,” 21.[↑]
59. Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and the Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 57–60.[↑]
60. Pringle made an important contribution to the understanding of decay processes in the cause of disease. His understanding of putrefaction led him to advocate proper hygiene, latrines, and ventilation in army hospitals. He published his results in Observations on the Diseases of the Army (1752). See “Pringle, Sir John (1707–1782)” in www.britannia.com/celtic/scotland/greatscots/op1.html.[↑]
61. Observations on the Diseases of the Army, in Camp and Garrison in Three Parts with an Appendix, Containing Some Papers of Experiments, Read at Several Meetings of the Royal Society (London: A. Millar, 1752, 1753, 1755).[↑]
62. The dried bark of the cinchona tree’s root is the source of a number of alkaloids, including quinine, which contain medicinal properties. The root is also known as Jesuit’s bark, Peruvian bark (because of its origin in South America), and quinquina. See “Products of the Empire. Cinchona: A Short History,” Cambridge University Library, www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/rcs/cinchona.html.[↑]
63. John Pringle, “Appendix: Paper VI,” in Observations, 331.[↑]
64. Ibid.[↑]
65. Dorothea W. Singer, “Sir John Pringle and his Circle,” Annals of Science 6 (1950): 127–80. According to Singer, “The analogy between putrefaction and fermentation, their association with contagious disease and the suggestion that all are caused by minute living organisms was familiar in medical writings since the sixteenth century. But Pringle, though he emphasized the ‘fermentation’ of the blood in typhus patients, seems never to have considered the hypothesis of living contagion” (127).[↑]
66. d’Arconville, “Préface,” in Essai pour servir à l’histoire, iii.[↑]
67. Ibid.[↑]