Richard Saumarez facts for kids

Richard Saumarez (FRS FRSE FSA FRCS) (born 13 November 1764 – died 28 January 1835) was a British surgeon and a writer about medicine.

Saumarez wrote many books and articles. He had very modern ideas about medicine and how doctors should be trained. A famous writer named Coleridge praised Saumarez for his strong arguments. Coleridge said Saumarez helped change how people thought about the human body. He believed Saumarez showed that life isn't just like a machine. Instead, it has its own special "power" that helps it grow and change.

Life Story

The Circus in Bath, where Richard Saumarez lived later in his life.

Richard Saumarez was born on 13 November 1764 in Guernsey, an island near France. His parents were Matthieu Saumarez and Cartarette Le Marchant. Sadly, both his parents died when he was young.

He later moved to London to study medicine at The London Hospital. His older brothers were famous too: Admiral James Saumarez, 1st Baron de Saumarez and General Sir Thomas Saumarez.

Richard Saumarez learned from a well-known surgeon named Sir William Blizard. He became a member of the Company of Surgeons on 7 April 1785.

He got married twice. First, he married Martha Le Mesurier on 7 January 1786 in Guernsey. She passed away in 1801. Then, on 29 May 1804, he married a widow named Mrs. Elizabeth Hetherington.

In 1834, he was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society. This is a very important group for scientists.

From 1788 to 1805, Saumarez worked as a surgeon at the Magdalen Hospital in Streatham. After that, he became an honorary governor there.

Richard Saumarez had a very busy and successful medical practice in London until 1818. He then moved to Bath, a city known for its Roman baths. He died there on 28 January 1835, at the age of 70.

New Ideas About the Body

Richard Saumarez had some groundbreaking ideas about how the human body works. He called his ideas "New Physiology."

True Science: Observing and Understanding

Saumarez believed that true science wasn't just about collecting facts. It was about understanding why things happen. He dedicated his book on physiology to Dr. John Hunter and others. He admired them for doing experiments that showed how things work naturally.

Saumarez also praised Bacon, another famous thinker. Bacon taught that to understand nature, you need to observe things carefully. Then, you need to use clear ideas to figure out the basic rules or "causes" behind what you see.

Saumarez said that a true scientist doesn't just chip away at wood or polish marble. Instead, a true scientist understands the main ideas and causes. This allows them to arrange things in an orderly way. He believed that without understanding the "history" or basic facts, you can't truly define anything. And without basic rules, there can be no real science.

He argued that simply seeing things with your senses isn't enough for true knowledge. Real knowledge comes when you understand the "cause" of what you see. He said that in his time, people often had wrong ideas about science. For example, he thought chemists were wrong to try and explain living things using the same rules as dead matter.

Three Kinds of Matter

Instead of the usual way of sorting things into animal, vegetable, and mineral, Saumarez suggested a new way. He wanted to sort all of nature into three types of "matter":

• Living matter: This includes all living beings, like animals and plants.
• Dead matter: This is what's left of animals and plants after they die.
• Common matter: This is the basic stuff the world is made of. It's matter that has never been alive, or was alive but has gone back to its basic form.

Saumarez also talked about a "living principle" or "life power." He said this power is spread throughout a living system and keeps it going. He believed this power helps living things stay healthy and reproduce. He also said that this "life power" was different from the "excitement" that makes living things react to things around them. He thought Hunter's idea of a "living principle" came before Dr. Brown's idea of "excitation."

He also made a clear difference between physiology (the study of living matter) and physics (the study of dead or common matter).

Different Rules for Different Matters

Saumarez believed that each type of matter follows its own special rules. The rules for dead or common matter (like in chemistry) don't work for understanding living matter (like in physiology).

For example, he looked at how food is digested. He said that digestion isn't a chemical process. Instead, it's a "living act" done by a "living power" inside the body. This power can change food into something new. He believed this living power is found in all living things, whether animal or plant. This power helps living things resist breaking down.

Saumarez also talked about the living power of the mind. He said that even though our senses get information from the outside world, our ideas come from the mind's own power. The mind takes in information from the senses and understands it as a whole.

He thought that the mind is like a creative power. It can unite different ideas and make them clear and deep. This is similar to what his friend Coleridge believed about imagination.

Two Sides of Living Power

Saumarez saw that this "living power" has two main jobs:

• Sustaining: It keeps living things healthy and prevents them from breaking down.
• Generating: It helps living things reproduce and grow.

He noted that many thinkers throughout history had talked about this power using different names. For example, Aristotle called it "eidoz," and Hunter called it the "principle of life." Saumarez liked Hunter's term and decided to use it. He defined the "principle of life" as the power that helps different kinds of matter become one kind, forms a living system, and protects it from decay.

How Life is Organized

Saumarez believed that living things are organized by these powers and energies. He thought that health and disease come from how this "living power" works.

He said this living power exists even before any action happens in the body. He called this a "pre-disposition." He also thought that this hidden living power needs to be activated to become active.

He saw that living things, like plants, have regular and organized functions. He believed this comes from a single cause inside the system itself: the "living principle." This principle keeps everything working together in harmony.

Living Power is More Than Just Reacting

Saumarez said that this "living power" is not just the ability to react to things (like nerves or senses do). He explained that the "living power" is spread throughout the whole system. But the "sensitive power" (what makes us feel) is more limited.

However, the sensitive power is important for animals to know about the outside world. This power is also linked to feeling pleasure and to instincts. But in humans, there's something more than just instincts.

Instincts vs. Consciousness

Saumarez believed that humans are not as good as animals at using instincts or senses. For example, plants are better at reproducing than animals or humans. But as you go higher up the ladder of life, the power to reproduce is traded for the power of sensation. And in humans, sensation is traded for something else: the mind or consciousness.

He thought that humans need to control their animal instincts with a higher power: self-awareness and rational thought. If humans just follow their instincts, they won't be truly free.

He also said that the mind can combine different sensations. This connects to ideas from other thinkers like Locke and Coleridge, who talked about how the mind and imagination work.

Mind and Consciousness

Saumarez believed that humans are thinking beings, not just driven by instincts. He thought that developing consciousness helps humans control their instincts and become free.

He said that if people just give in to their senses, their mind becomes weaker. They stay like children or like animals, controlled by their desires.

He also believed that thinking, which is an inner experience, is more important than just sensing things. He thought that our senses are there to help us improve our self-awareness and consciousness. This can raise our minds to higher levels, even to a spiritual level.

Saumarez felt that agreeable experiences help raise the mind and consciousness. These experiences make the mind focus on deeper, objective needs, rather than just subjective wants from basic instincts.

He wrote that by using our minds properly, we realize we are special beings. Even though we have appetites and senses, we can resist them. We can choose to fast when hungry, take unpleasant medicines, or face dangers. We can even work hard and accept death.

For Saumarez, the power of the mind is self-contained. He said we can stop a train of thoughts, focus on certain ideas, and even change our thinking. This ability alone makes humans "free agents."

Examples of Physiology

Saumarez gave many examples to show that living actions cannot be explained by simple chemical or physical processes.

He explained that after food is digested by a living system, it is completely changed. He said that digestion is a "vital" (living) act, not a chemical one. The change in food doesn't come from the food itself. It comes from the power of the living system that receives it.

He pointed out that when external things act on a living system, the results are very different. For example, if the body's organs can't act on or resist substances, then instead of food being changed into useful things, it might just rot or ferment.

Saumarez linked this to the "power by which every living system is protected and preserved from decomposition and decay." He called this power "Life." He said it was the same idea as what other scientists called Vis Medicatrix Naturæ (Stahl), Vis Vitæ (Haller), Nisus Formativus (Blumenbach), Living Principle (Hunter), and Excitability (Brown).

He also used an example from Hunter about plant sap. Hunter found that sap inside a living tree could stay unfrozen even at very cold temperatures. But if the sap was taken out of the tree, it would freeze at a much warmer temperature. Saumarez explained that this was because the sap inside the tree had its "living power" which resisted the cold. Once separated, it lost that power.

Another example he gave was about bile, a fluid in the body. He noticed that bile from the liver (hepatic bile) was yellow and active. But bile that stayed in the gallbladder (cystic bile) turned greenish or almost black. Saumarez believed this change happened because the bile lost its "living principle" while sitting in the gallbladder. It started to break down, just like it would outside a living system.

He concluded that the further things get from their original cause, the weaker their ability to keep their qualities becomes. Since the gallbladder is further from the liver (where bile is made), the bile changes from a better to a worse condition there. It goes from a living state to a dying state.

Saumarez also thought that sometimes, as the body's physical power weakens, the mind's power can increase.

His Writings

Here are some of the books and articles Richard Saumarez wrote:

• A Dissertation on the Universe in general and on the Procession of the Elements in particular (1795)
• A New System of Physiology (1798, with later editions)
• Principles of Physiological and Physical Science (1812)
• Oration before the Medical Society of London (1813)
• A Letter on the evil Effects of Absenteeism (1829)
• On the Function of Respiration in Health and Disease (1832)
• Observations on Generation and the Principles of Life (1799) – This article contained many ideas he later wrote about in more detail.
• On the principles and ends of philosophy (1811)