Richard Saumarez FRS FRSE FSA FRCS (13 November 1764 – 27/28 January 1835) was a British surgeon and medical author.
Saumarez was a prolific writer, with advanced ideas regarding the subject of medicine and medical education. Coleridge identified and praised Saumarez for his "masterly force of reasoning, and the copiousness of induction, with which he has assailed, and (in my opinion) subverted the tyranny of the mechanic system in physiology; established not only the existence of final causes, but their necessity and efficiency to every system that merits the name of philosophical; and, substituting life and progressive power for the contradictory inert force, has a right to be known and remembered as the first instaurator of the dynamic philosophy in England." (Biographia Literaria, Chapter 12)
Life
Saumarez was born in Guernsey on 13 November 1764 to Matthieu Saumarez and Cartarette Le Marchant. Both parents died when he was young, and he later went to London to study medicine at the London Hospital. His older brothers were Admiral James Saumarez, 1st Baron de Saumarez and General Sir Thomas Saumarez
Saumarez trained under Sir William Blizard. He was admitted a member of the Company of Surgeons on 7 April 1785.
He married Martha Le Mesurier on 7 January 1786 in Guernsey. She died in 1801 and on 29 May 1804 he married a widow, Mrs Elizabeth Hetherington (née Enderby).
He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1834.
In 1788, Saumarez became surgeon to the Magdalen Hospital, Streatham, until 1 March 1805 when he was appointed an honorary governor.
Saumarez had a large and lucrative practice in London until 1818. He then retired to Bath, where he died at 21 The Circus on 28 January 1835.
New Physiology Bacon, Hunter and True Science Saumarez dedicates his book on physiology to Dr. John Hunter amongst others.
To the late MR. J. HUNTER, to DR. GOODWIN, SPALLANZANI, and a few others, we are eminently indebted for many valuable facts obtained through the medium of experiments ... thereby manifesting the natural condition of things without altering it.
Saumarez also praises Bacon for having set down a true method of approach to nature, through direct observation based on clear ideas, not just the collection of facts.
The carpenter who chips the timber, and the mason who polishes the marble, are not to be considered as the men of science; but he alone, who, from a precise knowledge of principles and of causes, is able to direct those materials to be arranged with order, form, and symmetry. It was with that end in view, that his lordship analysed before he generalised; that he has separated the individual from the species; the species from the genus; and, from a multitude of effects, endeavoured to arrive at cause.
True science for Saumarez is designed to analyse facts to arrive at the necessary historical understanding and basic or first principles which takes sense impression to understanding.
Without the full possession of these permanent and universal facts, a general, not a particular knowledge of any subject can ever be obtained: without history, we can never have definition; and without axiom, there can be no science.
Knowledge, properly so called, does not simply consist in the impressions made on the senses by the operations of external phenomena; true knowledge can only be admitted to exist, when we are in full possession of the cause whence the effects are derived; and he alone can be denominated the man of science, who is able to connect the cause with the effect.
Saumarez argued that the level of knowledge in his day was poor and corrupted by false principles. In particular, the study of chemistry was not only still ignorant of the principles of "elective attraction," but sought to extend the principles that only held for dead and common matter to the realm of living matter.
It is greatly to be lamented that the pursuits of the chemists, instead of being confined to their proper objects—to the examination of the qualities of matter, dead and common—have been equally, but improperly, directed and extended to the investigation of living matter also; hoping to explore the causes of animation, and of vital action, from chemical phenomena, which are the inevitable attributes of decomposition and decay.
Three Systems of Matter Instead of the usual classification into animal, vegetable and mineral, Saumarez proposes a classification based on 'matter.'
I shall class the whole system of nature, as it has been called, and the matter of which it is composed, under the three distinct heads,— of common,—of living,—and of dead matter.
FIRST, By living matter, I comprehend the various orders of living beings with which the universe is replenished and adorned.
SECONDLY, By dead matter, I confine myself to the exuviæ of animals, and of vegetables; as well as to the whole substance of which these beings are composed, after the actions of life are at an end, and the state which is known by the appellation of death.
THIRDLY, By common matter, I mean the primitive, or original materials, or elements, of which the world is composed; matter which either, has never received the participation of life, or having received, has lost it, and been resolved back into a common state.
Saumarez distinguishes between the property of living matter that is general and diffused through the whole system, and active - materia vitae diffusa - and that which is particular and dormant. The former maintains the preservative (sustentive) and participative (generative) capacity of a living organism. The principle of life is the principium vitae diffusum. We could also say that the former is the inherent capacity of the system to respond, and the latter is the result of the interaction of the former with the exciting powers, the stimuli of Dr. Brown and the Brunonian system of medicine. Saumarez claims that Hunter preceded Brown with his principle of a living principle, which Brown then expressed in the idea of excitation as the stimuli for bringing potential life or excitability to actual life or excitement.
Saumarez then also distinguishes between physiology and physics.
To physiology, belongs the province of investigation [of] the properties of living matter. To physics such as is dead, or common...
Different Laws for Different Systems of Matter Each system of matter "not only in the progress of its evolution, but in the actions it performs, is governed and impelled by laws, distinct and peculiar".
The laws and principles governing dead or common matter (chemistry) cannot be employed to any useful end in understanding living matter (physiology). As an example, the "assimilating and convertible power" or "converting power of the assimilating organ" found in digestion, as "proved by Mr. Hunter and Spallanzani" cannot be explained by chemical laws and actions, but must be performed by a "living power resident in the organ and its secretions, in this case, that of the gastric juice of animals and man." From all of his observations of the facts from previous experiments, Saumarez is led to the logical conclusion that "the process of digestion...is not a chemical, but a living, act." He is further led to conclude that this living power, which is able to first dissolve, diffuse and then re-arrange external matter into a new unified form, "pervades throughout the whole range of animated existence" whether animal or vegetable. And the essence of this living power is that it is able to overcome the chemical laws, so that they resist being reduced to the elements (entropy).
Saumarez also addresses the living power of the mind which is necessary to relate to living sense experience.
Although the organs of sense are the avenues through which impressions from external objects are first made, it is from the native vigor and power of the mind, that ideas are made to flow; while the spark comes from without, the flame resides within; although it is set in motion by external means, it is from the power of mind alone, by which those ideas and motions ought to be directed.
The mind on the contrary, which subsists not like the organs in parts, but as a whole total and universal, receives the impressions wholly and totally, and contemplates altogether, and at once, the various attributes of the body, a perception of which the organs of sense had separately obtained. While the organs of sense, therefore, distinguish the particular attributes of a body, the mind, on the contrary, receives and conceives these perceptions, universally; things partible it views impartibly; things divisible, indivisibly; things temporal, eternally.
This correlates with his contemporary Coleridge's view of the imagination as a creative power (governed by laws that are 'the very powers of growth and production"), that is "vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead"). As with Coleridge, Saumarez sees mind and consciousness to be a creative function that is higher and greater than sense-experience, indeed, as Coleridge puts it, "in the mind's self-experience there are evidently two powers at work, which relatively to each other are active and passive; and this is not possible without an intermediate faculty, which is at once both active and passive." Thus, the act of thinking presents two sides for contemplation, – that of external causality, in which the train of thought may be considered as the result of outward sensations, of accidental combinations, of fancy, or the associations of memory, –and on the other hand, that of internal causality, or of the energy of the will on the mind itself. In philosophical language, we must denominate this intermediate faculty in all its degrees and determinations, the IMAGINATION, the compleating power which unites clearness with depth, the plenitude of the sense with the comprehensibility of the [intellect], impregnated with which the [intellect] itself becomes [understanding]– an intuitive and living power. (Biographia Literaria)
Duality of Living Power Saumarez also sees that the nature of this living power is both sustentive and generative, and has been spoken of throughout history in different ways, including most recently by Dr. John Brown.
It is by the energy of this same living power, resident in the seed of plants, and in the fecundated ova of animals, that the acorn becomes evolved into an oak,—the infant foliage expanded into leaves,—and the whole process of nutrition and of growth carried on. It is this power which constitutes the architect and the fabricator, by which the whole machine is erected; it is the base on which the whole stands, it forms the bond of its elementary parts,—the cement that unites them into one whole; it is the cause primary and efficient, whence the individuality of every living system arises, in which the form and the sex it assumes, essentially reside; by which, the human species differs from the brute, the brute from the vegetable, the vegetable itself from matter inanimate and common; this power it is, which I call life. The matter, which this power has assimilated and organised, it is, which I call living matter. It is this principle, which has been named by ARISTOTLE, eidoz,—by HARRIS, form—by STAHL, vis medicatrix naturæ—by HALLER, vis vitæ—by BLUMENBACH, nisus formativus—by J. BROWN, excitability ... and by HUNTER, principle of life. This last term appears to me so appropriate and distinct, that I shall consequently retain it. The principle of life may be defined to be "that power, by whose energy different species of matter are assimilated to one kind, a living system organised and formed; and the various parts of which it is composed, are protected and preserved from decomposition and decay.
Organization of Life