Le Cat and the Physiology of Negroes

Le C at and the PhysiologytsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA of N egroes G . S. R o u ssea u TFHE ORIGIN of N eg ro es,’’ Ephraim Chambers wrote in the 1728 C yclopaedia, "and the cause of that remarkable difference in complexion from the rest of mankind, has much perplexed the nat­ uralists; nor has anything satisfactory been yet offered on that hand." A generation later, in the 1750’s, this was still true, although Claude Nicolas Le Cat was to influence considerably the picture. It is hard to know if Chambers, no scientist or medical man, would have been at all impressed by Le Cat’s theories. But if he had heard or read them, he might have modified somewhat his statement in the C yclopaedia. From the vantage of the history of science, Le Cat’s entire career, quite unsurveyed, incidentally, is as exciting as that part of it rep­ resented by his contribution to the age-old debate about the color of negro skin, its origins and history, from the beginning of man to the eighteenth century. Born in 1700 and dead by 1768, Le Cat was the chief physician and surgeon of the Hotel-Dieu, the leading hospital in Rouen, a member of many French and foreign scien­ tific societies, and the author of over a dozen medical treatises. In 1762 he retired from his hospital post, and during his remaining seven years wrote most of the books that utilize his researches, ob­ servations, and reading of over fifty years.1 His scientific contribution to the race argument has either been neglected or thought so insignificant until now that one looks in vain for his name in most modern reference books in the history of science and medicine as well as in encyclopaedias and dictionaries of biography. And yet, careful scrutiny of his works reveals that 369 Ra c is m in t h e Eig h t e e n t h Ce n t u r y he played a role in advancing biological understanding of skin col­ or. He himself was apparently aware of this role, and he according­ ly devoted his greatest scientific energies to what we today must regard as his most significant medical work, ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA T ra ite d e la co u leu r d e la p ea u h u m a in e en g en era l & d e celle des N eg res en particulier, published in Amsterdam in 1765.2 Le Cat’s treatise contradicts previous theories maintaining that bile is responsible for the color of human skin; this argument had been advanced as indisputable scientific fact in the earliest writings of Egyptian medicine, later appeared in Homer, Strabo, Ovid, and Pliny, and was advanced throughout the Renaissance and for much of the eighteenth century. The T ea tro C ritico of Father Feijoo is typical of the impressionistic manner in which the bile argument was set forward: succinctly, without experimental support, and as an ipse d ixit argument.3 Other eighteenth-century naturalists, in­ cluding Raymond de Vieussens, Buffon, La Mettrie, D’Holbach, and numerous travel writers, also repeated the argument as if it were gospel truer than truth. In Italy Albinus and Sanctorini supported a bile theory (although these men recanted and at several junctures even displayed skepti­ cism about the belief), and in France, where it seems to have been extremely popular, it attracted numerous advocates, and none more vocal than Pierre Barrere, a Perpignanese physician and medical author who strenuously championed it in 1741 in a dissertation on the cause of skin color, D isserta tio n sur la cause p h ysiq u e d e la couleur, des N eg res, de la q u a lite de leu rs cheveux, & d e la g en era­ tio n de l’u n & de I’autre. Germans, Scandinavians, and Englishmen also gave the belief their stamp and seal, and it is accurate to say that by 1750 the belief was prevalent—truly as popular as the ’monster-mongering” sport, to use the phrase of Professor Jordan in his edition of Samuel Stanhope Smith’s E ssay on th e C auses o f C o...