Jean Marie Noël Godefroy Calès () was a French physician and politician. He was born on 21 March 1799 in Franciade, Seine and died on 25 July 1868 in Villefranche-de-Lauragais, Haute-Garonne.
Biography Godefroy Calès was born on 21 March 1799 in Franciade in a family from Occitania with a republican tradition. His father, Jean Calès (born in Caraman on 8 November 1764, deceased in Mazamet on 11 October 1840 and married to Marianne Louise Victorine Fournier, deceased on 9 February 1744 in Villefranche-de-Lauragais), was a physician and the administrator of the region Haute-Garonne between 1793 and 1794. He was later appointed, in 1799, chief physician of the military hospital of Franciade, then called and located after the revolution within the walls of the Abbey Church of St Denis, where his son Godefroy was born. He then filled, from 1800 to 1804, the functions of Inspector-General of Military Hospitals.See « Godefroi Calès » in « Biographie nationale des contemporains rédigée par une société de gens de lettres » (National biography of contemporaries written by a society of men of letters), under the direction of Mr. Ernest Glaeser, Editors: Glaeser and Co., Paris (1878). p. 85. Public domain. Identifier: ark: / 12148 / bpt6k5861239f. Source: National Library of France, Digital Collections Department, 2008-232271. Available in French on Gallica's website: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5861239f/f91.item.r=Cales Jean Calès was the brotherThe Calès siblings consisted of:
1) Jean-Marie (16/10/1757-Cessales, † 13/04/1834-Liège), Physician and Deputy. Without descendants.
2) Jean (08/11/1764-Caraman, † 11/10/1840-Mazamet), Physician and Inspector General of Military Hospitals, married to Marianne Louise Victorine Fournier (?, † 09/02/1744-Villefranche). Father of Godefroy Calès (1799–1868) and Louis Denis Godefroy Calès (1800–?)
3) Jean-Louis, known as Figeac (19/12/1766-?, † 14/01/1850-Cessales), Physician, married (in 1839, at 73 years old) to Paule Bonnet (16/05/1783-Renneville, †?). Without descendants.
4) Jean-Chrysostôme (27/01/1769-Caraman, † 21/08/1853-Cessales), Colonel and Baron of the Empire. Without descendants.
5) Jean Joseph Etienne Victorin (26/04/1772-?, † 16/06/1853-Cessales), Military Officer. Without descendants.
6) Jean Joseph
7) Etienne, known as Petit (21/08/1773-?, † 22/01/1855-Cessales), Unmarried, without profession. Without descendants.
8) Jean
9) Marie Etiennette (? -Caraman, † 08/01/1849-Villefranche), married to Jean-Paul Pujol, Notary in Villefranche († 01/02/1840-Villefranche). Mother of Constantine Pujol († 1861) and Marie Justine Pujol (1796–1894).
10) Marie Justine (? -Toulouse, † 05/09/1873-Villefranche), married to Constantin Pujol († 10/06/1844-Villefranche). Without descendants. of Jean-Marie Calès (1757–1834), the eldest, also physician and representative at the National Convention and at the Council of Five-Hundred, and of Jean-Chrysostôme Calès (1769–1853), colonel in Napoleon's Great Army, baron of the Empire and representative at the Chamber of Representatives. Their parents (Godefroy's grandparents), Jean Calès, who was an alderman of Caraman, and Jeanne Rochas, were landowners of the region of Lauragais near Toulouse, from old Protestant families rooted in the region and forced to convert to Catholicism after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes issued by King Louis XIV in 1685.« Le Conventionnel Jean-Marie Calés (1757- 1834): du Lauragais à Liège. » by Pierre Arches, Actes des 115e et 116e Congrès nationaux des Soc. savantes, Avignon, 1990 et Chambéry, 1991, Section d'H. moderne et cont., T. II, (1992), pp. 225–232. In French.
The younger brother of Godefroy, Louis Denis Godefroy Calès, (born in November 1800 in Etain, Meuse), medical student in Toulouse in 1821, then professor at Castres, was presented to the Faculty of Protestant Theology of Montauban (created in 1808 by Napoleon I) and the Protestant consistory named him, on 20 April 1832, pastor in Viane (Tarn) where he will officiate until June 1874.in « Histoire du protestantisme dans l'Albigeois et le Lauragais, depuis la révocation de l'Edit de Nantes (1685) jusqu'à nos jours, par Camille Rabaud (président honoraire du consistoire de Castres, lauréat de l’académie française) » (History of Protestantism in the Albigeois and the Lauragais, from the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) to the present day, by Camille Rabaud (honorary president of the consistory of Castres, laureate of the French Academy)), by Camille Rabaud (1898), Publisher: Fischbacher, Libraire-éditeur, rue de Seine, 33, Paris. Public domain. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library of France), Department Philosophy, History, Human Sciences, 8-LD175-334. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb34054736v Faithful to family's traditions, Godefroy Calès followed, in Montpellier, the courses at the Faculty of Medicine and was received doctor in 1822. Established in Villefranche-de-Lauragais, where he had early acquired a certain political influence in republican circles, he was named after the Revolution of 1830 Commander of the National Guard; but seeing that the government was embarking on a course which was not his, he resigned. Godefroy remained close, intellectually and politically, to his uncle Jean-Marie, and this, despite the fact that the royalists condemned him to exile and banished him from the national territory in 1816, as a regicide, during the restoration of Monarchy. A letter written from Liège in 1833 by the former conventional and deputy to the Council of the Five-Hundred, and addressed to his nephew Godefroy, explicitly testifies about the proximity of their common republican convictions.The extract from the following letter (sent from Liège on 21 October 1833 addressed by Jean-Marie Calès to his nephew, Godefroy) gives an interesting piece of information about the life he lived in Liège. One can see that the former member of the Convention had not, like so many of his colleagues, repudiated his democratic principles. « To Monsieur Calès, doctor of medicine, in Villefranche-de-Lauragais, through Toulouse, France. My dear friend. Your letter, full of wit and sparkling with gaiety, gives me the greatest pleasure; you remind me of the mischievousnesses of my youth, of which I do not repent; they made me laugh before, why should they make me cry now? I shall never forget that they made me bear without difficulty the misery, which continually heaped on me, that they have softened the bitterness which the exercise of medicine entails with it, a divine art in itself, yet detestable for him who exercises it. The uneducated public, the ignorant confreres, jealous and envious, give a thousand disgusts to the educated practitioner; I know that we can gain by it over all of that; but we feel some anguish, which we bear with difficulty. You tell me that a nobleman has vexed you because you were my parents: that does not astonish me from him; it is a caste so low, so ill-educated, that one can expect of it only the fruits of ignorance and prejudice. I am sure that the idiot who vexed you, if he lost his place, is as flat today as he was arrogant then. I have seen nobles of another flock, such as the Bethune-Sully, the Lagrange, the Nivernais, the Rohan, honoring themselves to be as sentinels at my door, and lavishing upon me the testimonies of the most adulatory sentiments, down to baseness. I’m citing this to prove you that these nobles have no nobility and, as long as this caste will exist, it will be the misfortune of France. I do not wish it to be annihilated, but I would have it put into the inability to harm. Here is my position in Liège. After living in Munich and Basel, in Switzerland, I came to Liège fifteen years ago. The police commissioner Wassin confused me with my brother Chrysostôme [Jean-Chrysostôme Calès, A.N.], with whom he had served, and proposed me to remain at Liège. The plan of the Bourbons was to push us until Siberia, and a safe asylum was, then, a treasure. I found it here. I first occupied myself to make theses for the candidates in medicine, which produced me twelve hundred francs a year. Soon after, a few cures, which made a certain noise, attracted to me a prodigious number of patients, but because I was not a Belgian doctor, I decided to give consultations at my house and I refused to go to see the patients, excepted only if I would be called in consultation by doctors, what happens sometimes. There are no important people who had not come to me yet, and the public has followed their example, which has given me some consideration. As I helped and pleased a lot of people, everyone tries to help me. Everything I do is free; a sober life puts me above any need and with a small income I look like a rich man. Embrace for me my sisters. The eldest [Marie-Étiennette Pujol, born Calès, A.N.] first had the courage to write to me before the end of my exile. I am grateful to her. Justine [Marie-Justine Pujol, born Calès, A.N.], whom I left as a child, always had my friendship. I thank you for giving me news of her. [...] All yours. Calès. A thousand greetings to your wife [Léonie-Alphonsine-Zulmée Calès, born Metgé, A.N.], of which you do not speak and to your little boy [Jean-Jules-Godefroy Calès, born in 1828, then 5 years-old in 1833. A.N.]. » (in « La Révolution Française », Historical review directed by Auguste Dide, Tome X, January–June 1886, Paris, Charavray frères, editors. Available (in French) on the site of Archive.org, p740-743: https://archive.org/details/larvolutionfra10sociuoft Still remaining a member of the Municipal Council of Villefranche until 1848, Godefroy proclaimed that year, during the French second revolution, the Republic, and took over the administration of the city.
A pioneering doctor on the study of pellagra Dr. Calès was one of the first doctors who identified pellagra in France, from 1822,« What is the time when pellagra has claimed the most victims in southwestern France? The details were missing to answer this question back in 1845. The earliest evidence that I had collected was that of M. Gaultier de Claubry, who stated that he had observed a case in the region of the Landes in 1809. « It is, said I, only in 1829, that Mr. Hameau reported the 'Mal de la Teste', that he observed since 1818. It was not until 1845 that we were informed of the existence of the disease in the departments of the Haute-Garonne and Aude where MM. Calés and Roussilhe have been observing it for twenty-three years [1822, N.D.A.]. » p.425: Chapter: Etiology, in « Traité de la pellagre et des pseudo-pellagres » (Treatise on pellagra and pseudo-pellagres, "Work crowned by the Institute of France, Academy of Sciences, meeting of February 6, 1865"), by Théophile Roussel, ed. JB Baillière and son; 1866. Public domain. In French. Read on the Archive.org website: https://archive.org/stream/traitdelapella00rous#page/424/mode/2up in the Lauragais, alongside Doctors Jean Hameau (Landes) and Roussilhe (Aude). This disease, which has become rare in developed countries, is due to malnutrition and is manifested by dermatitis, diarrhea and, in the most severe cases, dementia. In the absence of treatment, the outcome is death. It reaches poor populations whose diet contains little tryptophan and Vitamin B3 (Niacin, Vitamin PP), as in the case of non-nixtamalized maize diets.