BARTHEZ, Paul Joseph, one of the most celebrated physicians of the university of Montpellier, equally remarkable for the variety and extent of his erudition, and for the vigour of mind displayed in his abstruse speculations. He was born on the 11th of December 1734, at Montpellier, and received his early education at Narbonne, where his family resided, and afterwards at Toulouse. He soon gave decisive indications of those talents with which nature had endowed him, and which destined him to occupy a distinguished station among the learned men of the age. Ardent in his pursuit of knowledge, and uniting great quickness of apprehension with a tenacious memory, his progress in every study which he attempted was more than ordinarily rapid; he had a remarkable facility in acquiring languages, and at an early age had made himself master of the ancient and of several modern ones. He seems to have been for some time uncertain what profession he should follow; but having at length, at the instigation of his father, commenced the study of medicine at Montpellier in 1750, he pursued it with eagerness, and his success was proportionate to his exertions; for, in 1753, when he had only attained his 19th year, he received his doctor’s degree. He afterwards occasionally visited Paris, where he continued to pursue his studies with indefatigable industry; and attracting the notice, not only of those who were following the same pursuits, but of those who could better appreciate the full extent of his attainments, he was admitted to the society, and acquired the friendship, of the most distinguished literati of that period. In 1756 he obtained the appointment of physician to the military hospital in Normandy, attached to the army of observation commanded by Marshal d’Estrées. The zeal and assiduity with which lie discharged the duties of his new office were most exemplary. He seemed determined to profit to the utmost by the extensive field of observation which was thus opened to him, and in which he could put to the test of experience the knowledge which he had derived from other sources, and train himself in those habits of nice discrimination of symptoms, and of prompt decision in practice, without which learning is of little avail in the actual exercise of the art. He spent his whole time at the hospital, and often passed the night by the bed-side of his patients. Though naturally of a good constitution, his strength was not commensurate with the ardour of his mind; and the tasks in which he engaged were frequently undertaken without duly appreciating the physical powers necessary for accomplishing them. His health suffered much from the intensity of his application, and he was often very near falling a sacrifice to fevers and other disorders, which he caught from the patients in the hospital, whom he was attending too closely; and he thence became liable ever after to attacks of dysentery and bilious fever.

Many of the observations and inquiries whiclí he made during this period were published in the Memoirs of t ^ ιe Academy of Sciences; and two of his first productions were crowned by the Academy of Inscriptions. In 1757 his services were required in the medical staff of the army of W r estphalia, where he had the rank of consulting physician. On his return to Paris he contributed several articles to the Journal des Savans and to the Encyclopédie; and was, indeed, considered for a time as one of the editors of the former of those works. In 1761 he became a candidate for a medical professorship at Montpellier, which he fortunately succeeded in obtaining, and in which his abilities as a teacher soon shone forth with unrivalled lustre. His success was the more honourable, inasmuch as his colleagues, Lamure, Leroy, and Venel, were men o [7:4:419]distinguished reputation, and had raised the school to a high pitch of celebrity. But the singular perspicuity and precision of method, and the peculiar grace and facility of elocution, with which Barthez conveyed to his hearers the ample stores of knowledge of which he was in possession, soon attracted a crowd of auditors, who spread his fame in all directions. He taught in succession all the branches of the medical art; and pronounced, at the opening of the session in 1772, a Latin oration on the Vital Principle in man, which was published in the following year. About the same time appeared his work entitled Nova Doctrina de Functionibus Corporis Humani. These two works contain a sketch of his peculiar doctrines in physiology; doctrines which he more fully explained in a subsequent book, under the title of Nouveaux Elémens de la Science de l’Homrne∙, Montpellier, 1778, 8vo, and of which we shall presently give an account.

In 1774 he was created joint chancellor of the university, with the certainty of succeeding singly to the office on the death of his colleague, which happened in 1786. He afterwards took the degree of doctor in civil law, and was appointed counsellor to the supreme court of Aids at Montpellier. In 1780, he was induced to fix his residence in Paris, having been nominated consulting physician to the king, with a brevet of counsellor of state, and a pension of a hundred louis. Honours now crowded upon him; he was admitted free associate to the Academies of Sciences and of Inscriptions, and appointed first physician to the duke of Orleans, in the room of Tronchin. His reputation increased in proportion as his merits could be displayed on a wider theatre. He practised as a physician at Paris for nearly ten years, and received the most flattering testimonials of public approbation.

This brilliant career was suddenly interrupted by the great political revolution which broke out at this period, and by which the interests of every individual in France, however tranquil his pursuits or obscure his station, were more or less immediately affected.

It was the occasion of Barthez quitting Paris, and seeking in his native province that tranquillity and repose which the stormy aspect of the times forbade him to hope for in a more conspicuous station, holding, as he did, opinions so much at variance with the new order of things. Though he had lost the greater part of his fortune, acquired by so much labour, and was deprived of the honours to which he possessed so just a claim, he determined, upon his retiring to Carcassone, to practise his profession gratuitously, and devote all his leisure hours to the speculative studies connected with it, which had been the ruling passion of his life. It was in this retreat that he gave to the world his Nouvelle Mécanique des Mouvemens de ĩHomme ct des Animaux, which appeared in 1798, in quarto; and it was at this period, also, that he composed his work on Gout, a disease to which his attention had been naturally directed, in consequence of his having frequently suffered under its attacks.

An occasion soon occurred which demanded his services, and he once more emerged from his retirement, and repaired to the head-quarters of the army of the Eastern Pyrenees, where a contagious fever, originating from the accumulation of sick in the military hospitals of Perpignan, was committing great ravages. The progress of this contagion was effectually arrested by the adoption of the measures which he advised.

, ,θ n t hθ re-establishment of the College of Medicine at °ntpellier, Barthez was naturally looked up to as the P e ^ s 9 n best calculated to revive its former fame. But age an infirmity operated to dissuade him from resuming the a .ollous office of teacher; and he was accordingly nominated honorary professor. It was in this capacity that he pronounced, in 1801, his Discours sur le génie dHippocrate, on the solemn inauguration of the bust of the father of medicine in that school. In the following year he received several marks of favour from the new government under Buonaparte; he was nominated titular physician to the government, and afterwards consulting physician to the emperor, and member of the legion of honour.

His Traité des Maladies Goutteuses, in two volumes octavo, appeared in 1802; and he afterwards occupied himself in preparing for the press a new edition of his Elémens de la Science de l’Homme, of which he just lived to see the publication. His health had been declining for some years before his death; he was subject to attacks of melancholy, which obliged him to desist from pursuits that required intense application, and at length induced him to change the scene altogether, and seek relief amidst the society and amusements of the capital, where he was generally honoured and esteemed. Soon after his removal to Paris, symptoms of the stone manifested themselves, and increased so much in severity, that he was advised to submit to the operation of lithotomy, as affording the only means of arresting a lingering and painful death. But he constantly refused to undergo the pain and risk to which it would have necessarily exposed him, till, after long protracted suffering, during which he had in vain exhausted all the resources of medicine, he was suddenly relieved by a symptomatic spitting of blood; this hemorrhage, however, was pregnant with new dangers, and, by its continual recurrence, was the immediate occasion of his death, on the 15th of October 1806, in the seventy-second year of his age. As we have already stated, he had published in the same year a second edition of his Nouveaux Elémens de la Science de ľHomme. He bequeathed his books and manuscripts to Μ. Lordat, who, in consequence, published two volumesof Consultations deMedecine, Paris, 1810, 8vo, to which he prefixed a preface of his own. Previous to the appearance of this work, however, a collection of consultations of Barthez, and of some other physicians of Paris, was given to the world by Saint-Ursin; but it appears to have been unauthorized by those to whom he had confided his papers, and contains but few of the consultations which were afterwards published by Μ. Lordat. Another posthumous work of Barthez, the Traite du Beazι, preceded by some account of his life, was edited in 1807 by his brother, Μ. Barthez de Marmorières, who is known as the author of agricultural essays, and projects for improving the maritime coast of Languedoc, together with some translations from the oriental languages; and who has sometimes been mistaken for the subject of the present article.

Barthez has enjoyed a much higher reputation on the Continent than in this country, where, indeed, his writings are but little known. The work which has chiefly contributed to establish his fame, and which contains the development of his peculiar opinions on physiology, is the Nouveaux Elémens de la Science de ľHomme. It is not written, however, with the simplicity and clearness which might have been expected from one who had been in the constant habit of instructing others, and whose lectures were generally admired as possessing those qualities in an eminent degree. He appears to have been early impressed with the futility of all the theories that had been hitherto advanced in explanation of the phenomena presented by living beings, and to have been incited to the bold attempt of raising a new system upon more rational and solid foundations. In the preliminary discourse to the work we have alluded to, he lays down, with great correctness, the fundamental principles of the method of philosophizing in the natural sciences. The common object of these sciences he states to be the research into [7:4:420]the causes of natural phenomena, in as far as they can be learned by experience; and shows that we have no direct knowledge of these causes, except as manifested by such of their effects as we perceive. In the infancy of philosophy, numerous causes are assigned to these apparently diversified effects; during its advancement, and in proportion as the similarity of effects which had been referred to different causes is established, the number of these assigned causes becomes more and more circumscribed. Although the real nature of the agents producing those general facts, to which we ultimately arrive by following this method of induction, be absolutely unknown, yet, in reasoning concerning them, we find it convenient to express them by a name, as if they were really known to us; in the same way as, in prosecuting an algebraical calculus, we must employ characters to express the unknown as well as the given quantities. But the distinction should ever be kept in view; and we should err greatly were we to imagine that we could derive any ultimate advantage by the substitution of other symbols, which differed from them only in appearance, or which involved the admission of some hypothetical principle.

Such are the rules by which he professes to be guided in his own investigations; and such the tests by which he examines and passes judgment upon the doctrines of the different sects of Animists, Mechanicians, and Chemists, which had successively prevailed before him in the schools of medicine, and also upon the more recent doctrine of the Solidists, which was then becoming fashionable. In the review which he gives of the opinions of the several leaders of these sects, he displays an accurate acquaintance with the wide circle of medical literature. But, in the prosecution of his plan, he shows, what the example of others has so often proved, that it is more easy to overthrow than to build a system; and he evidently violates the strict principles of induction, and of cautious limitation to the province of philosophical inquiry, which he had prescribed, when he engages in the task himself. He sets out with endeavouring to establish a gradation among the causes which operate in producing motion. The simplest of these is the force of impulsion; that of gravitation appears to him less simple; and still less so those of electricity and magnetism. The principles which regulate chemical affinities are more complicated, as well as those which are concerned in the crystallization of bodies. But the forces which produce the phenomena of living vegetables and animals are of a more refined order, and are all referable, according to Barthez, to a single cause, which he denominates the vital principle, or principle of life. Having established this dogma, he proceeds to discuss a variety of abstruse questions that have been agitated on the subject, such as, whether the vital principle has an independent'existence, distinct from the organized body which it animates; and whether it be a modification of the soul, or rational mind. He gives an elaborate historical sketch of the opinions of philosophers from the earliest times respecting the nature of life; tracing the different sentiments entertained by the followers of Aristotle and Descartes, together with the Stahlians and Boer-haavians, on the one hand; and those of Pythagoras, of Plato, and the sect of Stoics, on the other: the former not acknowledging any principle of life distinct from either matter or mind, and the latter admitting such a principle attached to the living body. A third class of philosophers is. noticed, at the head of which he places Bacon, and with which he associates Leibnitz, Cudworth, Van Helmont, and Hoffmann, who have recognised the existence of a vital power different from the ordinary physical properties of matter, and at the same time totally distinct from the soul. After expending much useless argument in refutation of the Stahlian doctrine of the identity of the vital with the thinking principle, and devoting a long chapter to the consideration of doubts as to our means of deciding the question, he shows himself strongly inclined to the belief that the principle of life is something which has a separate existence, distinct from any modification, either of matter or of mind. There is little doubt, indeed, that this was his firm persuasion, as he reasons from it in many parts of his work, though he seems averse to declare it without qualification, while he is discussing these questions. Having thus personified, as he very aptly expresses it, this new principle of life, he appeals to it for the solution of every difficulty. It is the master-key which unlocks every secret, and renders all the operations of the· living animal body perfectly intelligible. Irritability and sensibility are at once the direct effects of this universal agent. All the modifications of these properties, and, in a word, every phenomenon of life, which is not obviously the result of physical laws, are but so many immediate operations of the vital principle. To this fertile source he refers not only the ordinary muscular contractions, but also the slower and less sensible motions which take place in the iris, in the vascular system, and, in general, in those parts in which no muscular structure can be discerned; effects which he attributes to the tonic power of the vital principle. He contends for the existence of another power in the fibres, still derived from the same source, namely, the power of elongation after they have been contracted; a power which he thinks quite distinct from the other mechanical properties of the fibre, and of which the operation is exemplified in the dilatation of the pupil, the extension of the corpora cavernosa, and of the nipples, and in the diastole of the heart itself. He plumes himself more particularly upon his supposed discovery of a new species of force distinct from the muscular power; which he terms the force of fixed situation, and of which lie infers the existence from the circumstance of the tendο Achillis being ruptured, and of the patella and head of the os calcis being fractured, on some occasions, by an apparently slight exertion. He avails himself of this principle, also, to explain the phenomena of tetanus and other spasmodic affections.

In a subsequent part of the work he labours to establish the identity of sensibility and irritability, or, at least, the intimate connection which .subsists between them, and the dependence of both upon the immediate and direct operations of the vital principle. He endeavours to prove that both the sensitive and moving powers are exercised in the circulating fluids of the body, and adduces, in support of this opinion, many of the arguments brought forward by Mr Hunter in proof of the vitality of the blood. 0∏ the subject of secretion, implying processes which have hitherto been enveloped in so much darkness, and of which the explanation has in vain been sought for on mechanical and chemical principles, he is very brief, as it is the peculiar advantage of his theory, like the sword of Alexander, to cut through every knot that bids defiance to ordinary powers of unravelling. Secretion, being inexplicable by any of the hitherto known laws of nature, is, of course, simply the effect of the vital principle. The phenomena of animal heat were in danger of being at once consigned to the same Proteus-like power which could operate every possible diversity of effects. But chemistry had, in this instance, interposed some plausible theories, which must first be set aside; and-Bartbez is at great pains to state the reasons of his dissent from the received doctrines on this subject, and of his disbelief in the existence of caloric. He prefers the hypothesis which supposes heat to be a mere quality, excited by motion, an generated,, accordingly, in living animals by the intestino [7:4:421]motions of their fluids, and the friction of the solids against each other; and the cause of these motions and frictions being unknown, it followed, as a necessary consequence, that they must arise from the operation of the vital principle. Respiration he considers as a cooling or moderating process, and as useful, also, in exciting throughout the system the tonic actions; but all these actions and agitations of the fibres, and these intestine motions of the fluids, are still regulated by the vital principle which adapts them to variations of climate and other external circumstances of temperature.

Amidst these vague and unprofitable speculations, his work contains a great store of facts, which are often instructive, though sometimes they expose the credulity of the author. He has collected, for example, a number of curious particulars relative to the operation of different poisons on different animals; but intermingles with these well-attested facts many idle tales respecting the bites of rabid or enraged animals, in which the peculiar manners of the animal were communicated to the human species. Thus he quotes instances of men barking or attempting to bite in hydrophobia; of some mewing like cats after having been bitten by these animals; and of others, again, who flapped their arms, and crowed like cocks, after receiving the bite of one of these birds.

A large portion of the work is dedicated to the consideration of sympathies, which he distinguishes from wbat he terms synergies, defining the latter to be the connection, whether simultaneous or successive, of the vital forces of different organs, so as to constitute a function or a disease. He divides sympathies into three classes, according as they occur between organs having no visible relation to each other, those which have similar structures and functions, and those which are united by an intermediate texture, or by receiving the same set of vessels or nerves. His chapter on temperaments is ably drawn up; and he discusses well the comparative influence of physical and moral causes in modifying the human temperament, and the changes produced by age and the approach of death. He explains the operation of the more usual causes of death; enters into a comparison of the mutability of different seasons and climates; and concludes, from several facts and arguments, that the actual cessation of life is, in general, not accompanied by any painful sensation.

The merit of Barthez as a physiologist is more conspicuous on subjects which admitted less of his being led astray by his proneness to indulge in abstract speculation, and his predilection for metaphysical refinement. The most favourable specimen of his talents is afforded by his Nouvelle Mécanique des Mouvemβns de l’Homme et des Animaux; in which, avoiding all discussion as to the cause of muscular motion, he traces the mode in which this force has been applied by nature, according to the principles of mechanism, in effecting the different movements of the animal machine. He examines the relative disposition of the bones and muscles, the structure of the articulations, and the general play and particular motions °ı the limbs. Borelli (De Motu Animalium') had given the first model of such a work; but Barthez has investigated the subject with greater care, and has extended his u θ'vs to a much wider range of phenomena. He enters minutely into the consideration of a great variety of modes 0 locomotion, both in man and the inferior animals, for ∏ ach he has amassed an immense number of facts; oming, altogether, a work which will ever remain a monument of his industry and superior abilities.

∏ consulting his writings on the practical branches of is profession, we again find ourselves bewildered in a - ynnth of speculations on the proximate causes of disease, and the modus operandi of remedies. In his Treatise on Gout, he adopts the principles of the humoral pathology, in addition to his own physiological doctrines concerning the force of fixed situation, or principle which retains muscular parts in their appropriate places independently of irritability. He states the proximate cause of this disease to be a specific gouty state of the habit, which he infers from the supposed influence he has observed from specific remedies, and especially aconite, in curing it. He defines the gouty state of the blood to consist in “an improper mixture of its component parts, which· prevents in different degrees the natural formation of its excrementitious humours; so that these humours, being more or less altered, undergo a spontaneous decomposition, which causes the earthy substance to predominate in them.” This earthy substance, or, in other words, gouty matter, is deposited upon the extremities, and thus occasions the paroxysm. His practice, on the whole, notwithstanding his adoption of theories now generally exploded, is tolerably judicious; though he shows but little discrimination in the analysis which he gives of the works of practical authors on this disease; and he seems to be strangely deficient in information as to the practice of English physicians. In other respects his knowledge is accurate and copious; and the history he gives of several of the irregular forms of gout, and also that of sciatica, in which, however, he chiefly follows Co-tannius, are deserving of praise.

In the preface to his Nova Doctrina de Furictionibus Naturae Humanae, he has given an excellent arrangement of the general principles of the objects to be kept in view in the medical treatment of diseases. He treats of this subject more at large in his treatise De Methodo Medendi, published at Montpellier in 1777, and also in the preface to his Traite des Maladies Goutteuses. He considers all the different methods and indications of cure as capable of being comprehended under three heads, the natural, the analytic, and the empiric. The natural, methods have for their object to promote the spontaneous operations of nature tending to restore health, or, as they have been usually termed, the vires medicatrices naturae. The analytic methods are those which proceed upon a previous analysis of the disease into the several simpler diseases of which it consists, or into their ultimate component symptoms, which are separately and successively combated by means respectively suited to each. These are the more indicated, in proportion as the disease is more complex, and admits of being resolved into a greater number of elements. The empiric plan of treatment is directed to change the whole nature of the disease, by means of which experience has taught us the efficacy in analogous cases. These means are of three kinds; having either a perturbing, an imitative, or a specific operation: the first being such as, by producing effects of a different kind from those of the disease, tend to diminish or entirely suppress the latter (as when the paroxysm of an ague is prevented by the excitement of a strong sudorific or cathartic operation); the second, such as produce effects analogous to those which nature herself employs for the cure of the disease; and the third those whose salutary operation is known in no other way than as the direct result of experience.

The writings of Barthez appear to have had considerable influence in overthrowing many of the crude and preposterous theories which had prevailed in the schools of medicine; and, however he may have been seduced from the path of genuine philosophy by an excessive disposition to generalize, and an overweening fondness for abstruse speculation, he still deserves the praise of being an original thinker i and of standing pre-eminent among [7:4:422] his contemporaries for the courage with which he shook off the trammels of authority, in a university where it had ruled with despotic sway, and where the dogmas of antiquity were held in peculiar reverence. ' (y.)