Philippe Charlier on Robespierre and Marat

Here are some notes from a TV documentary broadcast on 15th February on France 5 in which Philippe Charlier outline his latest researches into the "sick men of the Revolution", Robespierre and Marat.

This is one of those documentary with an irritatingly long preamble.  Philippe Charlier introduces his work as a  forensic pathologist and anthropologist.  Historians Serge Bianchi, Olivier Coquard and Patrice Gueniffey outline biographies of Robespierre and Marat, with the aid of some, admittedly well put-together, dramatic tableaux.

Nicolas Ferry, the dwarf Bébé

Among the more disturbing items in the collection of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris is this sad little skeleton, the mortal remains of  "Bébé", the famous dwarf of Stanislas, duke of Lorraine.  Dwarfs had once been a familiar fixture of court life throughout Europe, but by the early 18th-century they had all but disappeared from Western Europe; in France the official position of "court dwarf" was suppressed  in 1642 after the death of Anne of Austria's dwarf Balthazar Pinson.   Bébé,  at Lunéville, the glitttering intellectual hub created by Stanislas, thus excited unprecedent interest.  His life illustrates the transition from a Renaissance world of courtiers and curiosities into the bright new era of Enlightenment science.

The "hideous wen" of Jacques-Louis David

Here is another famous medical affliction, the growth which disfigured the face of the painter Jacques-Louis David. 

Maquette of a posthumous bust of David by François Rude, 22.5 cm.
 High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchased in 2013
https://frenchsculpture.org/fr/sculpture/6208-jacques-louis-david-le-peintre-1748-1825

As a student, probably in 1773-4, David was involved in a fencing accident.  His opponent's foil pieced his left cheek which began gradually to swell:  as a result his face became asymmetrical, his mouth was pulled out of shape and  his speech, which was already affected by a speech impediment, became embarrassingly distorted. 

The blood of Marat

 

I can't believe I managed to miss this story!!! 

Here is yet another quest in historical anthropology from "France's most famous forensic sleuth", Philippe Charlier. This time the object of his attention was the blood-soaked pages of the journal annotated by Marat on 17th July 1793 at the moment when Charlotte Corday plunged her fatal knife into his heart.  The aim was to isolate Marat's DNA from the stains and, potentially, to throw light on his medical condition

As with the gourd containing the blood of Louis XVI, the work was carried out in conjunction with the Spanish paleo-geneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox in Barcelona.  The final report was published in January this year. The investigation claimed a couple of firsts: "the oldest successful retrieval of genetic material from cellulose paper.", and, more portentiously, "the first retrospective medical diagnosis to include the genetic analysis of a historical figure".

Louis XVII - "Pathographie"

This post translates/summarises a set of three reports published by the palaeopathologist Dr  Pierre Léon Thillaud in the context of the 1979 excavations:

In September 1979 a investigation carried out in the immediate area of the church of Sainte-Marguerite resulted in the exhumation of a  number of human bones.  A Commission, consisting of professors Huard and Grmek, and Dr Pierre Léon Thillaud was asked to examine them and give an expert osteo-archaeological opinion, with a view to perhaps identifying the remains of the child who died in the Temple in 1795.  These articles, originally published in the review Cahiers de la Rotonde in 1983, were written by DrThillaud in fulfilment of that protocol.

Dr Thillaud's first paper considers the autopsy findings of 1795 and the second evaluates the reports  from the 1846 and 1894 exhumations.  Since it seems unlikely that the remains themselves will be re-examined in the near future, Dr Thillard's literature reviews continue to represent the most impartial, expert assessment available.

The debate over Robespierre's health

In 2013 the popular TV forensic anthropologist Philippe Charlier - unchastened by the debacle over Louis XVI and his DNA - caused yet more controversy  by  his collaboration with Philippe Froesch in the now-notorious  Robespierre "facial reconstruction". Not content with proving Robespierre was an ugly thug, he also pronounced him to have been victim to a hitherto little known disease called "sarcoidosis". Historical diagnoses are always highly speculative but Charlier meant to be taken seriously - he even managed to publish his findings in The Lancet.  Not surprisingly historians were quick to criticise;  Peter McPhee was particularly affronted, since he found his article on Robespierre's "medical crises" cited as Charlier's chief authority.

Sarcoidosis, we learn, is "an autoimmune disorder involving the abnormal collection of chronic inflammatory cells that form as nodules in multiple organs" (most usually the lungs and skin.)  The disease was not described until 1877, so naturally it would not have been recognised in Robespierre's time.  There are wide variations in presentation.  According to NHS Choices, the most common symptoms are tender red bumps on the skin, shortness of breath and a persistant cough, though some sufferers have no symptoms at all.  In some cases the condition clears spontanously, and there are both acute and chronic forms of the disease. All of which makes it hard to diagnose without x-ray and detailed medical examination.

The blood of Louis XVI: Found....and lost?

The Blood of Louis XVI?
In 2010 there was excitement in the press when 
a decorative gourd said to contain the blood of Louis XVI was submitted for analysis  to a Spanish team of forensic biologists team under Carles Lalueza-Fox of the Barcelona Institut de biologia Evolutiv.  The gourd, of a sort typically hulked out as a vessel contain gunpowder, bore the inscription, "Maximilien Bourdaloue on January 21st dipped his handkerchief in the blood of the king after his beheading".There was  no cloth inside, but researchers were able to scrape dried blood from the interior.   Early results of DNA testing were promising.  The sample was from a male and there were strong genetic indications of an individual with blue eyes.  The Y-chromosome was identified as being from a haplogroup -  a set of inherited genetic variations - so rare among modern Eurasians that it was concluded that the sample must indeed belong to a royal line.

The team now needed comparative data.  One possibility was the heart of Louis XVII in St.Denis which had been authenticated by DNA analysis  as long ago as 1999. Unfortunately this research had relied on mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the female parent (the heart had been matched with genetic material from Marie-Antoinette's hair); there was no data on the nuclear DNA needed to verify the paternal line.