If one wanted to list all the bizarreries and all the cruelties that science inspires and scientists commit, for immense newspaper pages would not be sufficient. Animals furnish innumerable victims to these men, insatiable in the discovery of a few of nature’s secrets. There is an anatomist who, in the name of society, consents to spend his life in an attic and to live in a condition bordering on indigence in order to dissect animals at his ease and to examine the most microscopic parts of their nervous apparatus, the digestive system, the circulation, the respiration and all the marvels of their organization. That man, that Decius of natural history, has his works printed at his own expense, which no one in France reads, and, more especially, no one buys, but which generate astonishment and admiration among foreign scientists. Mention his name to the qualified scientists of our public establishments and they will shrug their shoulders disdainfully.
It is true that that eccentric—as he has been called for forty years, and perhaps more—has dedicated all his time, his fortune, his health and his life to the study of just two animal species: cockchafers and cats, but let us add that these studies provide the key to the entire system of organization of insects and mammals. What does it matter that the unfortunate fellow does not have the smallest pension, is nothing at the Natural History Museum, and leaves others to take possession of his discoveries or claim credit for them. One cannot show oneself to be more authentically eccentric!
We knew, a few years ago, at the Collège de France, a young man of great talent, whose name now enjoys a just scientific celebrity and who has won a Prix Monthyon for having exercised, for I don’t know how long, the profession of torturer of animals. He had collected the largest possible quantity of stray dogs, and submitted them to tortures that would cause the imagination of the least sensitive person in the world to quiver. Some he inoculated with frightful diseases, on others he carried out dangerous operations, allowed his victims to recover, and then killed the in order to study the results of those operations. He starved them or fattened them at will; sometimes he fed them nothing but egg-white for months on end, and sometimes gelatin. He did not let a single day pass without poisoning or detoxifying several of his prisoners. He amputated their limbs, bled them only to inject various substances into their veins thereafter.
Finally, I shall retain as long as I live the memory of an unfortunate swan that lived for a fortnight in Monsieur Magendie’s75 operating theater with its breast open in order that he could more easily study the movements of the unfortunate bird’s heart and the circulation of its blood.
These dramas do not only take place at the Collège de France but at the Jardin des Plantes and everywhere else that there are naturalists. God only knows the number of jackals, foxes and dogs that Monsieur Flourens76 has immolated, not to mention the pigs that he fed on madder and then killed in order to observe the manner in which layers of bones are formed and superimposed in living beings.
Take note, however, that if I have cited the names of members of the Institut, and listed the scientific murders to which they devote themselves, it is not without reason, for I have to tell you about one of the most odious examples of cruelty that the fanaticism of science has ever committed.
I find myself, alas, united to the guilty party by a long and proven friendship; now, I ask you, how many friendships exist that have not been broken, or at least deteriorated, by time and sad proofs?
It was in 1848, when the terrible June riots were threatening Paris, and one awoke to the general clamor and waited with anxiety for the fatal raising of the curtain on a drama that had, alas, been anticipated for a long time.
One morning, I received a note that said: come to see me; I have a curious experiment to carry out, and I’d like you to witness it.
The man who wrote to me thus lived three or four leagues from Paris, in a kind of small country house, half-cottage and half-château. The revolution had given men of letters leisure which, if by no means comfortable, was nonetheless complete. I respond to my friend’s invitation.
I found him sitting on the threshold of his house, built amid the ruins of an ancient château; he came to meet me with a smile on his lips, and seemed quite astonished when, with a perfectly natural preoccupation, I talked to him about the troubles agitating Paris.
“Bah!” he said. “Do as I do, and don’t read a single newspaper; follow my example in turning away from your door all hawkers of news, and let the good God, who is great and merciful, do as he will.”
With that, he took me by the hand and took me into an immense cellar, which bore a strong resemblance to a dungeon, and whose door, broken twenty years before, permitted reptiles and bats to establish their domicile there freely.
“Here, look,” he said, he said, lifting up a hooded lantern after opening it, “see how many bats there are living in this crypt. Have you ever seen a finer collection of Vespertilionidae?”
Indeed, I saw a rather vast quantity of bats in the cracks that time had chiseled in the upper part of the vault, suspended by their hind feet, heads down, enveloped in their wings as if by a cloak.
“For three months,” he continued, closing the hood of the lantern again, “I’ve been befriending these animals, in order to be able make a success of the experiment I’m planning. Every day, I release an immense quantity of insects in the cellar, which I collect from the surroundings. Several bats even take the insects from my hand, including a little rearmouse, Vespertilio murinus, which certainly recognizes me, and perhaps even has some affection for me. It’s a female and she has established her domicile over there, at the far end of the cavern.”
He took me by the hand and led me further into a profound obscurity, all the way to the back of the cellar, where he reopened his lantern.
Indeed, I then saw a bat suspended from the vault like the others; on seeing my friend, she did not seem in the least frightened, opened her mouth and uttered a little cry, displaying a double row of sharp white teeth.
He took a tin-plate container from his pocket full of peppered months and presented one of the night-flyers to the bat, which snatched it and chewed it with the finest appetite in the world.
“That’s not all—look, she comes when I call.”
He whistled, and this time the rearmouse, detaching itself from the vault, circled around the naturalist and seized on the wing, several times and with remarkable skill, the moth that he held up to her in his fingers.
While she devoted herself to this exercise, I could not help remembering the admirable accuracy of expression and observation with which Buffon describes the bizarre flight of bats, which he calls a kind of “uncertain fluttering” executed with effort, in an awkward manner. In fact, they only take off from the ground with difficulty, never rise to a great height, and can only accelerate, slow down or even steer their flight, which is neither rapid nor direct, imperfectly. They proceed by mean of abrupt vibrations, following an oblique and tortuous course. In spite of all these difficulties imposed on her by nature, the rearmouse nevertheless seized all the moths that my companion offered her, without ever having to come back for a second attempt.
When the animal was sated, it hung itself from the vaults by its hind feet again. Then, the naturalist took from his pocket a piece of iron wire embedded at one end in an iron handle, and asked me to heat it up in the lantern-flame.
“You know,” he said to me, while I carried out the task he had confided to me, “that bats can steer in the midst of the most profound darkness. In caves completely deprived of light, they negotiate in flight the numerous corners of their dwelling without hesitation, without every colliding with projecting rocks or the walls of vaults. A bird could not act with as much security and precision even in broad daylight. How do they do that? You might tell me that nocturnal animals have the faculty of concentrating the faintest beams of light their extremely dilatable pupils, and succeeded in distinguishing objects clearly enough to guide themselves, to see their prey and seize it—but in total, absolute darkness their pupils can dilate to any extent; they cannot perceive beams that don’t exist, and in such circumstances a bat would be just as blind as any other animal. Nevertheless, it acts as if it can see there perfectly.”
“Georges Cuvier, the great genius of natural history, observed that phenomenon,” I replied. “If my memory isn’t mistaken, he explained it by saying that the ears of bats, almost always very large, form and enormous membranous surface along with its wings, almost bare and so sensitive that the animals can probably navigate in the dark holes in which they live purely by mans of changes in air pressure.”77
“Isn’t it rather a sixth sense with which nature endows bats?” he said. “Isn’t it one of those organs without analogy with human senses, and which, in consequence, escapes the anatomical research of our naturalists? We shall see! Is your iron wire red hot?”
“Yes,” I replied.
He raised his hand toward the vault, picked off the little bat, which allowed itself to be taken without resistance, yielding with confident abandon to a person she considered, and perhaps loved, as a friend.
The torturer seized the red hot iron wire that I was holding, drew it over the bat’s eyes, blinding her, and set her on the ground.
At first, the poor little beast utter cries of pain, and writhed on the ground for a few minutes; her entire body trembled convulsively and her wings opened and closed with unequivocal signs of pain.
With one knee on the ground he watched her do it with impassive attention.
Eventually, the bat calmed down. She extended her ears to the left and right, righted herself, dragged herself toward a wall, climbed it slowly but surely, raised herself up to a height of two or three feet, let herself fall, extended her wings, took flight, and without hesitation, as if she could see perfectly, regained the spot that she had occupied when the naturalist had taken hold of her in order to treat her with the cruelty to which little King Arthur had once been the victim in the Scottish legend.78
“Let’s leave her there to rest,” he said. “We’ll come back this evening to continue our experiment.”
We went back up to his residence.
All day long he seemed preoccupied, paying mediocre attention to what I said to him, and while we were eating dinner he suddenly pushed away his plate, took out his watch and exclaimed: “She must be getting hungry. The time is ripe.”
As he finished speaking he got up from the table and, whether I liked it or not, I had to follow him down to the cellar again.
Having arrived before the blind bat, he emitted the summoning whistle to which he had accustomed the bat. She trembled visibly, shook her ears and extended her wings slightly.
Then the naturalist took a moth in his fingers, which he held by one wing, and began buzzing in the attempt to escape the hand that was holding it.
Then the bat detached herself from the vault, described two or three circles around us, went past my friend’s hand like an arrow and seized the nocturnal insect with as much surety as if she still had the use of her eyes.
“Cuvier was right!” I exclaimed.
“Perhaps,” he replied, repeating the experiment that had cost the poor bat her sight five or six times. “Perhaps, also, it’s the sixth sense I mentioned.”
We separated. I came back to Paris. It was the twenty-first of June 1848.
On the twenty-second, Paris fell prey to the horrors of civil war; barricades desolated all our streets; cannon fired grapeshot at the insurgents; blood flowed everywhere; our most illustrious general fell to French bullets, and the Archbishop of Paris paid with his life for the courageous attempt that he made to save stray or guilty sheep.
The first letter I received after those fateful days was from my friend the naturalist. It made no mention of anything except the anatomical studies that he had undertaken to try to grasp the secret of the sixth sense given by nature to bats.
Yesterday, I went to visit him, and found him still poring over his studies. More than five hundred bats have fallen victim to his scientific investigations; the cellar has been entirely depopulated of its nocturnal guests, and only one single bat remains: the blind rearmouse.
“At least,” I said to the fanatic, “you’ve spared her, in memory of the cruel torture to which you rendered her victim.”
“Oh!” he replied, with a sigh, “If she wasn’t serving my study of the instincts that blindness creates in Vespertiliones, I’d have dissected her a long time ago, like the rest. You can’t have any idea how difficult it is for me to find bats nowadays. There isn’t a single one for five leagues around.”
You see, the love of science is a fanaticism, if not a monomania, as Esquirol79 said, who spent his life dissecting, not bats, but human brains.