January 4, 2021 • 31 mins
In the 17th century, Europe was obsessed with science – and very competitively so. When it came to blood transfusions, there was a great deal of conflict in France's scientific community. And Jean-Baptiste Denis was right in the middle of it.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy P. Wilson. So this
is a two parter that I have had on my
list for a while. I scribbled down in a notebook
(00:23):
as Jean Baptiste Denise dash blood Um. This is also
one that if you are a regular listener to our show,
we actually interviewed a woman we didn't previous host Sarah
and Dablina didn't, named Holly Tucker, who wrote a book
called Blood Work about this topic, which I used a
lot for this one. But there's so much more in
terms of the narrative of the story than they were
(00:45):
able to get into that it really merits its own discussion.
Because as I started researching Jean Baptiste Denise life, which
was well before I actually started doing this episode, it
became so immediately apparent that he was embroiled in a
lot of conflict professionally, and the controversial nature of his
work was so vehemently opposed that it really halted the
(01:07):
development of medical science in some key areas. It's also
one of those stories that gets told and retold because
there are some very um intriguing and titillating facts around it,
uh And in those retellings things get a little blurry
sometimes and some misinformation gets included. So I thought it
(01:31):
was worth really like doing kind of a deeper dive
on it. And Denny's story also happened smack dab in
the middle of a time when Europe was absolutely obsessed
with science and very competitively obsessed with science. The work
that was being done in England and France, as scientists
were racing to understand what blood really was and how
(01:51):
it functioned, was very much an intellectual battle between the
two nations. The reigns of Charles the Second of England
and King Louis the fourte the France were very explosive
in terms of cultural and scientific development, with each country
jockeying the claims supremacy in various disciplines, and the story
of blood transfusions is very much part of that. It
(02:14):
also is, you know, a contrast between the two countries
in terms of their culture and ideology, um, because you know,
there's the Protestantism of England and the Catholicism of France,
and one being very much attached to uh kind of
old traditional ways of handling things like medicine, and the
other being England being a lot more willing to kind
(02:38):
of take chances and explore things that hadn't hadn't been
established as norms yet. But even within France there was
a lot of argument going on among men of science
about whether transfusions should be attempted at all. And so
we are going to start today by talking about some
of the scientific work that led up to these contentious
battles over transfusion. This first are is going to cover
(03:01):
then Jean Baptiste Denny's early life and career, and then
in the second part we are going to get to
the events that ultimately lead to two court cases in
Paris regarding Denise work heads up. This first part, in particular,
mentions the use of animals in medicine. I feel slightly
guilty because whenever Tracy does a subject where there is
animal testing or animal use involved, she's so careful to
(03:24):
make it palatable so I won't cry, and then I
always come in with something like the rabbit test and
also blood transisions with all the dogs. Um, there are
reasons that I actually think it's important to talk about this.
We're going to keep the details in terms of like
the literal medical you know, kind of gross aspects of
it um as minimal as possible, But there's no way
(03:46):
to not talk about the animals because they're a big
part of these medical developments. And it also opens up
a door where we can talk along the way about
the various perceptions and reasonings over the ethics of using
animal subjects, because even in the seventeenth century, people were
divided over this issue and the medical community was having
a lot of debate over it. So that is how
we are approaching Jean Baptiste Deny and the development of
(04:09):
blood transfusion science. Yea, And I will say we also
have similar conversations about subjects besides animals, and like how
much detail to include without it being like horrifying or
traumatizing to people. The folks are like, how can I
only hear this warning with animals? Like, it's not It's
not a conversation that's limited to animals in our No,
(04:32):
not at all. It's one of those things I think
we both try to juggle all the time, right, not
falling into the sensationalism of relaying information but still getting
the important the important aspects of it conveyed that allows
us to touch on the nuances of any given subject.
It's a little bit tricky across all kinds of spaces
(04:55):
in history, correct, so to get into the blood conversation.
In sixteen sixteen William Harvey published his observations about blood circulation,
and he kept working in this area and he turned
this into a whole book that was published in sixteen
eight This book was called exer Citacio and Atomica Did
(05:18):
More to cortis at sanguineous in animalebus and that was
published in and these discoveries of Harvey really kicked off
a period where scientists were incredibly eager to unlock all
the secrets of blood in its workings, and often because
of how little was really understood. This did lead to
experiments that are incredibly cruel by today's standards, including things
(05:41):
like injecting animals with all manner of substances to record
the reactions. And the way people thought about animal testing
at the time and also just about animals was far
different from the way most of us think about animals today.
Philosopher and scientists Reneed a cart who lived until six
and fifty had made the case with great vigor that
(06:03):
while animals were mechanically similar to humans in terms of
having basic functioning systems of organs and muscles, they were
not thinking, feeling creatures. That was not how everybody felt.
There were definitely people who believed otherwise, but Descartes ideas
enabled this mindset that became common enough in the science
(06:25):
community that animal experiments were likewise becoming quite common. But
the idea of the physical body being connected to the
soul was also something that was hotly debated, and intellectuals
tried to both untangle and reconcile the worlds of science, religion,
and philosophy as they worked this out. In sixteen fifty eight,
(06:45):
there was a significant breakthrough in knowledge about blood and
it's working when Dutch naturalist and microscopist Yawns vomber Dam
looked at blood under a microscope. His description of what
he observed is the first recorded known documentation of red
blood cells. Eventually, people got this idea of transferring blood
(07:06):
from one being to another, and the British Royal Society
was the first to successfully complete an animal to animal transfusion.
They did this, of course, using dogs. In sixteen sixty five,
Englishman Richard Lower had begun experimenting with transfusions in dogs,
and he was able to refine his technique to a
point where he was consistently successful in transferring blood from
(07:28):
one dog to another. A number of different experiments by
Lower and others followed, and they were done to determine,
for example, if the breed, size or ages of the
dogs involved had any impact on the success of the procedure.
Parisian scientists were aware of these efforts, and one in
particular was a mix of fascinated and also frustrated when
(07:49):
the findings of these experiments were published in Paris. That
person was Jean Baptiste de ni And just in case
anyone wants to look him up, his last name you
will find spelled two different ways, deny d e n
I S and also deny d e n y s.
And the beginning of Jean Baptiste Denny's life is not
really documented at all. His year of birth is placed
(08:12):
kind of by estimate, only landing him as having been
born in the mid sixteen thirties. His father was a craftsman.
He made water pumps. Those were increasingly popular at the time,
not just for their obvious utility uses in homes, but
also as luxury items for the wealthy to ensure that
they always had lusher gardens. Denny's interest in medicine started
(08:35):
when he was a boy and his patient was himself.
He had asthma as a kid, which his doctors were
not able to control. According to his own account, the
treatment that had finally worked was one that he devised himself,
which was inhaling sulfur pictory in nine year old doing
self experimentation, and it's a little unsettling. Denny went on
(08:57):
to medical school. He received his medical degree from the
unit Versity of Montpellier, and then he settled in Paris
to begin his career. And he was really really ambitious.
Although he had come from a working class home, He
wanted to make a name for himself as a doctor
and treat the highest echelons of Parisian society. But having
(09:17):
earned his degree outside of Paris made him an outsider,
both physically and also in terms of how he was perceived.
Montpellier did not have the reputation of Parisian schools. This
was in part because it's students reviewed as more interested
in carousing than learning, and also because the faculty and
curriculum there were known to break tradition and to be
(09:40):
more willing to explore new concepts and science that would
have been practically heretical in Paris at the medical schools there.
By the time the work being done in England was
published in Paris and the periodical Philosophical Transactions, Denny was
really eager to learn about it, but he did not
have the money to get a copy. He was making
(10:00):
ends meet for himself and his new wife by teaching
anatomy to medical students and dissecting bodies in his own
home while students looked on. Uh. He could not read
English anyway, so if he had been able to get
his hands on a copy of this, he would not
have been able to read it. He was so frustrated
by this whole thing, because he even wrote to the
(10:20):
editor of Philosophical Transactions and was like, if I will
pay to have translations done, he couldn't afford to do that.
I don't know what he thought he was doing, but
he was just incredibly frustrated that he couldn't immediately have
access to this information. But eventually it took a couple
of months, but a translation was published in the Jean
Mal de Savant, and Denny eagerly read it. He wanted
(10:43):
to try transfusion himself, and he took advantage of his
work again teaching anatomy to med students, to start a
review of the circulatory system for himself as he was
also teaching his students, and in this he was also
assisted by a surgeon named Paul Emire, and Denny's obsession
with circulation is said to have been mocked by some
(11:04):
of his Parisian students during these lessons, Denny's first experiment
with dogs was really ambitious. He wanted to keep both
animals alive, and this was something that the English experiments
had never done. He also bled a third dog that
was not part of the transfusion, is sort of a control.
All three dogs survived the procedure and den he kept
(11:26):
them in his home for a week afterward to track
their health and behavior. All of them regained their strength
and vigor. And since we are currently on a positive
note with everyone surviving the trials, uh, this is a
good time to pause for a quick break, and we're
going to thank those sponsors to keep stuff he missed
in history class going. We mentioned right before the break
(11:53):
that the first transfusion that Denny tried using dogs worked.
Both of the animals that were actually involved in the
transfusion survive, as well as the one that he bled
as a control. But this is where it becomes very,
very apparent that Jean Baptiste Deny was not a man
who needed multiple successes under his belt before moving to
the next stage of experimentation. To him, that first surgery
(12:16):
was enough to confirm that transfusion worked and that he
could keep both subjects alive, so he was ready to
move on to the next step. That next step was
a three dog transfusion, where one dog was used as
the donor dog to the point of being near death,
and then the third dog's blood was used to revive
(12:37):
the donor dog. He used the same three dogs from
the previous experiment, and it worked, despite some confusion during
initial recovery. When it was revealed that one of the
spectators had given one of the dogs wine from their
cup shortly after it had been let up from the
operating table, it appeared that Denny had once again achieved
his goal, and so this really emboldened him him to
(13:00):
prepare for a public experiment. Yeah, This is one of
those things where it's like, Hi, I don't know what's
wrong with that dog. It's not walking quite right and
it's not recovering at the same rate as the others.
And then he found out someone had given it wine,
and it was like, oh, that dog is intoxicated. Okay, um.
I can't think of a more French faux pap than
giving a dog wine, But there you are. The goal
(13:24):
of Denny's third public transfusion was to see if he
could reinvigorate an elderly, sickly dog with the blood of
a young, healthy one, and he decided to perform this
procedure outdoors on the banks of the Sin near the
Pontiff Bridge. Uh. There are all kinds of problems with
doing surgery outdoors, but we're not getting into that. He
(13:47):
first gave a brief lecture on blood and its properties,
and then he began the transfusion. There were a lot
of people gathered around, people from you know, the very
uppersche lands of society down to you know, people that
lived on the street. Success. Once again, both the old
and the young dog survived, and at least by his records,
(14:09):
the elderly dog seemed to have gained a level of vigor,
and this public exhibition gave Jean Baptiste Denny, who had
so longed for prestige among the doctors of Paris, an
instant reputation as France's transfusion expert. The experiments continued from there,
and he tried all manner of combinations of dogs and
in different circumstances, and then he tried transfusing blood from
(14:33):
a calf into a dog, which survived. He repeated this
and other experiments, pairing different animals and recording the results
and writing up his findings for the Journal des Savants
and corresponding with other publications as well. He had become famous,
and he was not shy about discussing his successes as
(14:53):
he worked through the spring of sixteen sixty seven. This
all just sounds a little like of a mad scientist situation,
but other people were also chasing the same information. All
of Europe was really trying to unlock the secrets of blood.
They were all competing to push the transfusion field farther
(15:14):
than the people who came before. Yes, while there were
also everywhere detractors, it was a very division subject for
the medical community, which we will talk about some more
um and pretty early once that first publication came out
of England and was dispersed throughout Europe, people really really
got excited about it, and as experiments progressed, the big goal,
(15:37):
of course, loomed large, and that was transfusions involving humans.
This opened up discussions of just what species the donor
should be, and while some members of the scientific community
argued that, of course only the blood of a human
should be used for transfusions into a human subject, these
were ideological reasons they weren't necessarily based in science. Denny
(16:01):
did not share that ideology. Jean Baptiste Denis thought the
idea of taking blood from one person to add to
the life of another was just a horrifying thought. He
believed that animal blood was inherently more pure and this
was a better option. This idea of their purity was
(16:21):
developed by comparing the behaviors of animals to those of humans.
Deni argued that animals were not tainted by emotion, which
he thought would corrupt the blood. Animals also did not
drink or carrouse. To him, they lived inherently a cleaner
life because they were not driven by their passions to
make unhealthy choices. This is the first time I had
(16:43):
encountered that particular line of thought, and it was a
very different approach to thinking about animals in these situations
than I had ever come across before, which just fascinated me.
So the opportunity to test denise idea of transfusing animal
blood into a human presented itself in the summer of
sixteen sixty seven. There was a teenage boy involved. He
(17:07):
is sometimes reported as sixteen, also sometimes as fifteen. He
had been running a high fever for about two months
and doctors had bled him with no improvement, and finally
Denny was called in. Although it's unclear how he learned
about the patient, whether he was called by the parents
or just alerted to it by maybe someone else in
(17:27):
the medical community. We don't know what the boy's parents
feelings were on the matter of having an experimental transfusionists
suddenly visit their home, but however, the matter was ultimately settled.
It was determined that Denny could treat the boy. He
used blood from a lamb as the donor, and initially
this boy experienced a mild hemolytic reaction his arm turned
(17:52):
very warm, but this was fleeting, and the boy soon relaxed,
and then when the patient woke up the next day,
he appeared to be cured of this mystery ailment that
had puzzled doctors for months. Denny reported that he was
so pleased with the result and so eager to try
it a second time, that he then paid a healthy
adult a butcher, to be his subject. This may or
(18:14):
may not have been the same butcher that had assisted
with the lamb that was used for the boy's treatment,
and once again things went really smoothly. The butcher reported
that he felt fine, He prepared that donor lamb for
cooking and left with it, and Denny reported, though that
he found the man just a few hours later drunk
in a tavern. This made the doctor furious, but it
also indicated that his experiment had no ill effects. Denny
(18:39):
wrote up his notes and the results of both of
these experiments, and he sent the work immediately to the
printer for wide distribution, claiming to be the first man
to perform blood transfusion on a human patient. This news,
of course, made its way to England and infuriated the
scientific establishment that had been outpaced by this Frenchman who
(18:59):
had learned the basics from their early work. Deny did
not ever mentioned that he had been building on the
work of English scientists, which made matters worse. He actually
claimed the whole idea of transfusion had been French from
the very beginning. He was crediting a Benedictine monk named
Dome Robert de Jabe with the origin of this whole idea. Yeah,
(19:21):
the idea of crediting your predecessors is already pretty well
established in the scientific community. So the fact that he
left out all of the English uh scientists and doctors
who had been working on this, as well as them
kind of rewriting their history made people furious, and as
a result, the English periodical Philosophical Transaction started running commentaries
(19:43):
on the work that Denny was doing. In one there
were passages clarifying that the English, not the French, had
conceived of the idea, including this one quote, it is
notorious that transfusion had its birth first of all in England,
some ingenious person of the Royal Society, having first started
it there several years ago. Subsequent issues of the periodical
(20:07):
pointed out that Denny was moving ahead far too quickly
with human experiments and was not prioritizing the health of
the patients, but rather the progress of his work and ego.
Much was made of the care and caution of English
doctors being the reason that Denny had lapped them, rather
than any sort of scientific lag. It was basically like, no,
(20:27):
we're actual scientists in this person is just an egotistical,
over enthusiastic nutter who wants to like gain fame. Meanwhile,
England's Royal Society was furiously trying to catch up and
started animal to human transfusions of their own. Their initial
patient was a man with a drinking problem and a
(20:49):
very tenuous mental state. After two successful transfusions, the subjects
started telling people that he had turned into a sheep.
That obviously caused a whole raft of other problems. Yeah,
while while those transfusions appeared to be successful, he kind
of taked that success by walking around London and saying
(21:11):
I think I'm becoming a sheep. We'll talk a little
bit more about that fear coming up. So back in France,
those initial positive results of Denny's work with animal to
human transfusion gave him the confidence to try the controversial
technique again. France was still grappling with the morality of
(21:31):
this whole thing, so Dennis had to plan with his
associates in private what the next step would be, and
that was in part because it involved kidnapping. We will
get into the details of how this plan came together
after we first pause for a word from our sponsors.
(21:56):
The next patient and we have to use air quotes
there that Denny turned his attention too was a man
named Antoine Maa. Maa was a Parisian who had at
one point been employed as the valet of the Marquise
to seven year but at some point he had developed
some sort of mental illness. Uh. This is said to
have been catalyzed by a failed romance with a woman
a much higher social standing than Maa. Not only heartbroken
(22:20):
but also mocked for daring to try to climb the
social ladder through romance, really created a strain on him mentally,
and that strain caused a rapid decline in his mental health.
He went from initially exhibiting problems that manifested as irrational
angry outbursts to outright violence over a pretty short period
(22:41):
of time, including setting people's homes on fires, and while
the Marquise had gotten him medical attention. Initially, it did
not help, and so she eventually cut him off from
both her aid and his job completely. By sixteen sixty seven,
when his part in Denise story takes place, He's often
described as having been homeless, although that is not really accurate.
(23:02):
He did have a home, it was outside of Paris,
but he was often staying in the city and sleeping
on the street. Mahua was infamous in the city for
his deranged behavior, and Dennis thought that a transfusion might
cure him. Paris in the winter of sixteen sixty seven
was just exceptionally cold, and the challenges to just survive
(23:23):
were insurmountable for the city's poorest residents. Mahua had managed
to persist despite the elements and the odds being against him,
but he really was not in great health physically. At
this point. Denny had plotted with his surgeon Emirae, who
was still working with him, as well as other supporters,
to use Maoi. There was of course, no consent involved.
(23:46):
Maha was a fixture in the Marie district, so men
were sent there to look for him and capture him
if and when he was found In short, they were
instructed to kidnap him, which they did. He was then
taken to a hostel where his room and board were
paid until he was needed for the procedure, in part
so that he could have a period of regular meals
(24:06):
and a warm place to stay in the hopes of
bolstering his physical health before they tried this transfusion. The
second animal to human transfusion was performed at a private
residence belonging to Ari Louis de mal Moore, who was
a member of the King's Council and was born into wealth.
It was a wealth that had been augmented by his
(24:26):
father's embezzlement. While overseeing King Henry the fourth War Treasury.
Monmore was highly interested in science, and he had seen
Deny performed his public transfusion, and he was essentially using
Deny to bolster his own scientific academy. That was a
project that he had had in the works for some time,
(24:46):
and it was all but obliterated by the establishment of
the French Academy of Sciences by King Louis the fourteenth
in sixteen sixty six. Scientists of the French Academy had
attempted to replicate transfusions that had been done in England.
They were unsuccessful, so for Montmore, Denise seemed like the
key to outdoing them and reasserting his place as leader
(25:09):
in the scientific community of Paris. Since the public experiment
by pawt Neuf which Molmore had witnessed, he had been
serving as the niece patron and ensuring that he had
everything that he needed for these experiments. Yeah, he had. Similarly,
his academy he had been working on similarly had patronized
other scientists and made sure that they had lab space
(25:30):
at his compound. They had all of the tools they needed.
They didn't have to worry about you know, uh, room
and board. So he was this patron of scientists, but
it was all falling apart for him, and the night
the deny was to make his second transfusion attempt of
this nature, Momore had assembled a number of like minded dignitary's,
medical professionals and curious members of the Parisian elite. He
(25:54):
undoubtedly wanted people to know not only that Denny was
able to do this, but that he was the one
ankrolling it. There was a butcher on hand to see
to the drawing of blood from a calf that had
also been brought to the memoir home, and there was
also that same surgeon, Paul Emirae, who had been consulting
with Deny and who had prepared the room for the
transfusion with the various medical tools that they were going
(26:16):
to need. When Morea was brought into the room, it
was of course against his will. He was barefoot, he
was dressed in rags, and he tried to resist, but
was overpowered and tied up by the men that Momore
and Denise had assembled to help with this whole experiment.
By all accounts, this was a rather frenzied procedure. The
(26:36):
spectators on hand kept crowding around Deni and Emirae, so
both men began cursing and shouting at them, basically saying
you have to get back. Ten ounces of blood were
first drawn from Urroa and then the transfusion started, but
it wasn't entirely successful. Even on just a mechanical level, Emi,
Rae and Denny were only able to get about five
(26:58):
to six ounces of calves blood into Maha. Denny noted
that MAHA's temperature rose really sharply. He started to sweat,
and this means that he has the distinction of probably
having written the first known record of a hemolytic transfusion reaction.
That's a transfusion reaction where the blood recipient's immune system
(27:21):
rejects and destroys the red blood cells of the donor blood.
This experiment, of course, was well before we had any
understanding of blood groups, which wouldn't really get going into
the beginning of the twentieth century. And even so that
involved human blood and not calf's blood, so he and
m he did not really understand the cause of the
(27:42):
reaction that Mha was having, and because of the severity
of the reaction, when really just a tiny amount of
the calf's blood had been introduced, m Ray stopped the
procedure immediately. Marua was then taken to a room in
the Molmour home servant quarters to rest, and the spectacle
was over, and after lingering for a bit to murmur
(28:02):
over what they had just witnessed, Monmore's guests at last
went home. And that's where we're going to pause this story.
It's kind of a cliffhanger, might see a little cruel,
but we wanted to keep the events that happened next
on all of the ensuing court cases altogether is one
part of the story. Oh so much, so much blood.
(28:26):
All through this there's this like constant recurring uh like
voice in my head going, y'all, this is not a
good idea, not a good idea. And then we get
to this last one. I'm like, yes, seriously, not a
good idea, not a good idea, and just morally gross. Um.
There's a lot of moral grossness in this story. But
(28:48):
I have a story that is not really related to this,
but does involve some medical fun true fund It is
actually about our Point Setia episode. It is from our
listener Rose the Lee, who writes, Hello, Tracy and Holly.
First of all, I'm from Oklahoma with a parent from Arkansas,
So I say points Setta. Many people do. We've had
(29:08):
people I know on Twitter, even at my personal account
many people have noted that's how they say it. So
there you go. Uh. She continues, I wanted to send
a quick note about point Settia leaves. My mother also
loves Point setti is. When I was a wee, little
chunky toddler in the late eighties, my mom found me
surrounded by point Settia leaves and happily munching on something
(29:30):
being the wonderful nurse that she is and up to
date on all the research. She whisked me to the
hospital afraid I had poisoned myself after pumping my tummy.
A search of my stomach contents showed it was just
a banana, So no harm, no foul, and I have
a great story for two truths in a lie type intros.
I cannot imagine how hard it must have been at
(29:52):
the time, but it is good to know now that
I was in no real danger and we laugh about
it as a funny story now. I also wanted to
say how much I appreci it your thoughtfulness in telling
Jim Thorpe's story. Indigenous history is so little thought of
or disgust in a way that touches all of the complexities,
and I appreciate that you were willing to do that.
Thank you for the lovely podcast and work. Keep it up, Rosalie.
This is so cute. I love that it was a
(30:15):
harmless situation. Yeah. I I think I disclosed in our
poison control episode that my mother had to call poison
control on me multiple times in my childhood, so I
feel kind of a kinship here. I never had to
go to the hospital and give my stomach pumped. But
I definitely did eat some things that I really should
not have eaten. You know, kids are unwise and they
(30:37):
don't know and they learn about the world through testing it,
sometimes by eating it. Yes, and eating a banana is fine.
Eating a banana is fine unless you're allergic, which I
hope not many people are because bananas are lovely. But
if you would like to write to us, whether it
is about some medical mishap or not, you can do
(30:58):
so at History podcast at i heart radio dot com.
You can also find us on social media as Missed
in History, and you can subscribe to the show on
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you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
(31:20):
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy P. Wilson. So this
is a two parter that I have had on my
list for a while. I scribbled down in a notebook
(00:23):
as Jean Baptiste Denise dash blood Um. This is also
one that if you are a regular listener to our show,
we actually interviewed a woman we didn't previous host Sarah
and Dablina didn't, named Holly Tucker, who wrote a book
called Blood Work about this topic, which I used a
lot for this one. But there's so much more in
terms of the narrative of the story than they were
(00:45):
able to get into that it really merits its own discussion.
Because as I started researching Jean Baptiste Denise life, which
was well before I actually started doing this episode, it
became so immediately apparent that he was embroiled in a
lot of conflict professionally, and the controversial nature of his
work was so vehemently opposed that it really halted the
(01:07):
development of medical science in some key areas. It's also
one of those stories that gets told and retold because
there are some very um intriguing and titillating facts around it,
uh And in those retellings things get a little blurry
sometimes and some misinformation gets included. So I thought it
(01:31):
was worth really like doing kind of a deeper dive
on it. And Denny's story also happened smack dab in
the middle of a time when Europe was absolutely obsessed
with science and very competitively obsessed with science. The work
that was being done in England and France, as scientists
were racing to understand what blood really was and how
(01:51):
it functioned, was very much an intellectual battle between the
two nations. The reigns of Charles the Second of England
and King Louis the fourte the France were very explosive
in terms of cultural and scientific development, with each country
jockeying the claims supremacy in various disciplines, and the story
of blood transfusions is very much part of that. It
(02:14):
also is, you know, a contrast between the two countries
in terms of their culture and ideology, um, because you know,
there's the Protestantism of England and the Catholicism of France,
and one being very much attached to uh kind of
old traditional ways of handling things like medicine, and the
other being England being a lot more willing to kind
(02:38):
of take chances and explore things that hadn't hadn't been
established as norms yet. But even within France there was
a lot of argument going on among men of science
about whether transfusions should be attempted at all. And so
we are going to start today by talking about some
of the scientific work that led up to these contentious
battles over transfusion. This first are is going to cover
(03:01):
then Jean Baptiste Denny's early life and career, and then
in the second part we are going to get to
the events that ultimately lead to two court cases in
Paris regarding Denise work heads up. This first part, in particular,
mentions the use of animals in medicine. I feel slightly
guilty because whenever Tracy does a subject where there is
animal testing or animal use involved, she's so careful to
(03:24):
make it palatable so I won't cry, and then I
always come in with something like the rabbit test and
also blood transisions with all the dogs. Um, there are
reasons that I actually think it's important to talk about this.
We're going to keep the details in terms of like
the literal medical you know, kind of gross aspects of
it um as minimal as possible, But there's no way
(03:46):
to not talk about the animals because they're a big
part of these medical developments. And it also opens up
a door where we can talk along the way about
the various perceptions and reasonings over the ethics of using
animal subjects, because even in the seventeenth century, people were
divided over this issue and the medical community was having
a lot of debate over it. So that is how
we are approaching Jean Baptiste Deny and the development of
(04:09):
blood transfusion science. Yea, And I will say we also
have similar conversations about subjects besides animals, and like how
much detail to include without it being like horrifying or
traumatizing to people. The folks are like, how can I
only hear this warning with animals? Like, it's not It's
not a conversation that's limited to animals in our No,
(04:32):
not at all. It's one of those things I think
we both try to juggle all the time, right, not
falling into the sensationalism of relaying information but still getting
the important the important aspects of it conveyed that allows
us to touch on the nuances of any given subject.
It's a little bit tricky across all kinds of spaces
(04:55):
in history, correct, so to get into the blood conversation.
In sixteen sixteen William Harvey published his observations about blood circulation,
and he kept working in this area and he turned
this into a whole book that was published in sixteen
eight This book was called exer Citacio and Atomica Did
(05:18):
More to cortis at sanguineous in animalebus and that was
published in and these discoveries of Harvey really kicked off
a period where scientists were incredibly eager to unlock all
the secrets of blood in its workings, and often because
of how little was really understood. This did lead to
experiments that are incredibly cruel by today's standards, including things
(05:41):
like injecting animals with all manner of substances to record
the reactions. And the way people thought about animal testing
at the time and also just about animals was far
different from the way most of us think about animals today.
Philosopher and scientists Reneed a cart who lived until six
and fifty had made the case with great vigor that
(06:03):
while animals were mechanically similar to humans in terms of
having basic functioning systems of organs and muscles, they were
not thinking, feeling creatures. That was not how everybody felt.
There were definitely people who believed otherwise, but Descartes ideas
enabled this mindset that became common enough in the science
(06:25):
community that animal experiments were likewise becoming quite common. But
the idea of the physical body being connected to the
soul was also something that was hotly debated, and intellectuals
tried to both untangle and reconcile the worlds of science, religion,
and philosophy as they worked this out. In sixteen fifty eight,
(06:45):
there was a significant breakthrough in knowledge about blood and
it's working when Dutch naturalist and microscopist Yawns vomber Dam
looked at blood under a microscope. His description of what
he observed is the first recorded known documentation of red
blood cells. Eventually, people got this idea of transferring blood
(07:06):
from one being to another, and the British Royal Society
was the first to successfully complete an animal to animal transfusion.
They did this, of course, using dogs. In sixteen sixty five,
Englishman Richard Lower had begun experimenting with transfusions in dogs,
and he was able to refine his technique to a
point where he was consistently successful in transferring blood from
(07:28):
one dog to another. A number of different experiments by
Lower and others followed, and they were done to determine,
for example, if the breed, size or ages of the
dogs involved had any impact on the success of the procedure.
Parisian scientists were aware of these efforts, and one in
particular was a mix of fascinated and also frustrated when
(07:49):
the findings of these experiments were published in Paris. That
person was Jean Baptiste de ni And just in case
anyone wants to look him up, his last name you
will find spelled two different ways, deny d e n
I S and also deny d e n y s.
And the beginning of Jean Baptiste Denny's life is not
really documented at all. His year of birth is placed
(08:12):
kind of by estimate, only landing him as having been
born in the mid sixteen thirties. His father was a craftsman.
He made water pumps. Those were increasingly popular at the time,
not just for their obvious utility uses in homes, but
also as luxury items for the wealthy to ensure that
they always had lusher gardens. Denny's interest in medicine started
(08:35):
when he was a boy and his patient was himself.
He had asthma as a kid, which his doctors were
not able to control. According to his own account, the
treatment that had finally worked was one that he devised himself,
which was inhaling sulfur pictory in nine year old doing
self experimentation, and it's a little unsettling. Denny went on
(08:57):
to medical school. He received his medical degree from the
unit Versity of Montpellier, and then he settled in Paris
to begin his career. And he was really really ambitious.
Although he had come from a working class home, He
wanted to make a name for himself as a doctor
and treat the highest echelons of Parisian society. But having
(09:17):
earned his degree outside of Paris made him an outsider,
both physically and also in terms of how he was perceived.
Montpellier did not have the reputation of Parisian schools. This
was in part because it's students reviewed as more interested
in carousing than learning, and also because the faculty and
curriculum there were known to break tradition and to be
(09:40):
more willing to explore new concepts and science that would
have been practically heretical in Paris at the medical schools there.
By the time the work being done in England was
published in Paris and the periodical Philosophical Transactions, Denny was
really eager to learn about it, but he did not
have the money to get a copy. He was making
(10:00):
ends meet for himself and his new wife by teaching
anatomy to medical students and dissecting bodies in his own
home while students looked on. Uh. He could not read
English anyway, so if he had been able to get
his hands on a copy of this, he would not
have been able to read it. He was so frustrated
by this whole thing, because he even wrote to the
(10:20):
editor of Philosophical Transactions and was like, if I will
pay to have translations done, he couldn't afford to do that.
I don't know what he thought he was doing, but
he was just incredibly frustrated that he couldn't immediately have
access to this information. But eventually it took a couple
of months, but a translation was published in the Jean
Mal de Savant, and Denny eagerly read it. He wanted
(10:43):
to try transfusion himself, and he took advantage of his
work again teaching anatomy to med students, to start a
review of the circulatory system for himself as he was
also teaching his students, and in this he was also
assisted by a surgeon named Paul Emire, and Denny's obsession
with circulation is said to have been mocked by some
(11:04):
of his Parisian students during these lessons, Denny's first experiment
with dogs was really ambitious. He wanted to keep both
animals alive, and this was something that the English experiments
had never done. He also bled a third dog that
was not part of the transfusion, is sort of a control.
All three dogs survived the procedure and den he kept
(11:26):
them in his home for a week afterward to track
their health and behavior. All of them regained their strength
and vigor. And since we are currently on a positive
note with everyone surviving the trials, uh, this is a
good time to pause for a quick break, and we're
going to thank those sponsors to keep stuff he missed
in history class going. We mentioned right before the break
(11:53):
that the first transfusion that Denny tried using dogs worked.
Both of the animals that were actually involved in the
transfusion survive, as well as the one that he bled
as a control. But this is where it becomes very,
very apparent that Jean Baptiste Deny was not a man
who needed multiple successes under his belt before moving to
the next stage of experimentation. To him, that first surgery
(12:16):
was enough to confirm that transfusion worked and that he
could keep both subjects alive, so he was ready to
move on to the next step. That next step was
a three dog transfusion, where one dog was used as
the donor dog to the point of being near death,
and then the third dog's blood was used to revive
(12:37):
the donor dog. He used the same three dogs from
the previous experiment, and it worked, despite some confusion during
initial recovery. When it was revealed that one of the
spectators had given one of the dogs wine from their
cup shortly after it had been let up from the
operating table, it appeared that Denny had once again achieved
his goal, and so this really emboldened him him to
(13:00):
prepare for a public experiment. Yeah, This is one of
those things where it's like, Hi, I don't know what's
wrong with that dog. It's not walking quite right and
it's not recovering at the same rate as the others.
And then he found out someone had given it wine,
and it was like, oh, that dog is intoxicated. Okay, um.
I can't think of a more French faux pap than
giving a dog wine, But there you are. The goal
(13:24):
of Denny's third public transfusion was to see if he
could reinvigorate an elderly, sickly dog with the blood of
a young, healthy one, and he decided to perform this
procedure outdoors on the banks of the Sin near the
Pontiff Bridge. Uh. There are all kinds of problems with
doing surgery outdoors, but we're not getting into that. He
(13:47):
first gave a brief lecture on blood and its properties,
and then he began the transfusion. There were a lot
of people gathered around, people from you know, the very
uppersche lands of society down to you know, people that
lived on the street. Success. Once again, both the old
and the young dog survived, and at least by his records,
(14:09):
the elderly dog seemed to have gained a level of vigor,
and this public exhibition gave Jean Baptiste Denny, who had
so longed for prestige among the doctors of Paris, an
instant reputation as France's transfusion expert. The experiments continued from there,
and he tried all manner of combinations of dogs and
in different circumstances, and then he tried transfusing blood from
(14:33):
a calf into a dog, which survived. He repeated this
and other experiments, pairing different animals and recording the results
and writing up his findings for the Journal des Savants
and corresponding with other publications as well. He had become famous,
and he was not shy about discussing his successes as
(14:53):
he worked through the spring of sixteen sixty seven. This
all just sounds a little like of a mad scientist situation,
but other people were also chasing the same information. All
of Europe was really trying to unlock the secrets of blood.
They were all competing to push the transfusion field farther
(15:14):
than the people who came before. Yes, while there were
also everywhere detractors, it was a very division subject for
the medical community, which we will talk about some more
um and pretty early once that first publication came out
of England and was dispersed throughout Europe, people really really
got excited about it, and as experiments progressed, the big goal,
(15:37):
of course, loomed large, and that was transfusions involving humans.
This opened up discussions of just what species the donor
should be, and while some members of the scientific community
argued that, of course only the blood of a human
should be used for transfusions into a human subject, these
were ideological reasons they weren't necessarily based in science. Denny
(16:01):
did not share that ideology. Jean Baptiste Denis thought the
idea of taking blood from one person to add to
the life of another was just a horrifying thought. He
believed that animal blood was inherently more pure and this
was a better option. This idea of their purity was
(16:21):
developed by comparing the behaviors of animals to those of humans.
Deni argued that animals were not tainted by emotion, which
he thought would corrupt the blood. Animals also did not
drink or carrouse. To him, they lived inherently a cleaner
life because they were not driven by their passions to
make unhealthy choices. This is the first time I had
(16:43):
encountered that particular line of thought, and it was a
very different approach to thinking about animals in these situations
than I had ever come across before, which just fascinated me.
So the opportunity to test denise idea of transfusing animal
blood into a human presented itself in the summer of
sixteen sixty seven. There was a teenage boy involved. He
(17:07):
is sometimes reported as sixteen, also sometimes as fifteen. He
had been running a high fever for about two months
and doctors had bled him with no improvement, and finally
Denny was called in. Although it's unclear how he learned
about the patient, whether he was called by the parents
or just alerted to it by maybe someone else in
(17:27):
the medical community. We don't know what the boy's parents
feelings were on the matter of having an experimental transfusionists
suddenly visit their home, but however, the matter was ultimately settled.
It was determined that Denny could treat the boy. He
used blood from a lamb as the donor, and initially
this boy experienced a mild hemolytic reaction his arm turned
(17:52):
very warm, but this was fleeting, and the boy soon relaxed,
and then when the patient woke up the next day,
he appeared to be cured of this mystery ailment that
had puzzled doctors for months. Denny reported that he was
so pleased with the result and so eager to try
it a second time, that he then paid a healthy
adult a butcher, to be his subject. This may or
(18:14):
may not have been the same butcher that had assisted
with the lamb that was used for the boy's treatment,
and once again things went really smoothly. The butcher reported
that he felt fine, He prepared that donor lamb for
cooking and left with it, and Denny reported, though that
he found the man just a few hours later drunk
in a tavern. This made the doctor furious, but it
also indicated that his experiment had no ill effects. Denny
(18:39):
wrote up his notes and the results of both of
these experiments, and he sent the work immediately to the
printer for wide distribution, claiming to be the first man
to perform blood transfusion on a human patient. This news,
of course, made its way to England and infuriated the
scientific establishment that had been outpaced by this Frenchman who
(18:59):
had learned the basics from their early work. Deny did
not ever mentioned that he had been building on the
work of English scientists, which made matters worse. He actually
claimed the whole idea of transfusion had been French from
the very beginning. He was crediting a Benedictine monk named
Dome Robert de Jabe with the origin of this whole idea. Yeah,
(19:21):
the idea of crediting your predecessors is already pretty well
established in the scientific community. So the fact that he
left out all of the English uh scientists and doctors
who had been working on this, as well as them
kind of rewriting their history made people furious, and as
a result, the English periodical Philosophical Transaction started running commentaries
(19:43):
on the work that Denny was doing. In one there
were passages clarifying that the English, not the French, had
conceived of the idea, including this one quote, it is
notorious that transfusion had its birth first of all in England,
some ingenious person of the Royal Society, having first started
it there several years ago. Subsequent issues of the periodical
(20:07):
pointed out that Denny was moving ahead far too quickly
with human experiments and was not prioritizing the health of
the patients, but rather the progress of his work and ego.
Much was made of the care and caution of English
doctors being the reason that Denny had lapped them, rather
than any sort of scientific lag. It was basically like, no,
(20:27):
we're actual scientists in this person is just an egotistical,
over enthusiastic nutter who wants to like gain fame. Meanwhile,
England's Royal Society was furiously trying to catch up and
started animal to human transfusions of their own. Their initial
patient was a man with a drinking problem and a
(20:49):
very tenuous mental state. After two successful transfusions, the subjects
started telling people that he had turned into a sheep.
That obviously caused a whole raft of other problems. Yeah,
while while those transfusions appeared to be successful, he kind
of taked that success by walking around London and saying
(21:11):
I think I'm becoming a sheep. We'll talk a little
bit more about that fear coming up. So back in France,
those initial positive results of Denny's work with animal to
human transfusion gave him the confidence to try the controversial
technique again. France was still grappling with the morality of
(21:31):
this whole thing, so Dennis had to plan with his
associates in private what the next step would be, and
that was in part because it involved kidnapping. We will
get into the details of how this plan came together
after we first pause for a word from our sponsors.
(21:56):
The next patient and we have to use air quotes
there that Denny turned his attention too was a man
named Antoine Maa. Maa was a Parisian who had at
one point been employed as the valet of the Marquise
to seven year but at some point he had developed
some sort of mental illness. Uh. This is said to
have been catalyzed by a failed romance with a woman
a much higher social standing than Maa. Not only heartbroken
(22:20):
but also mocked for daring to try to climb the
social ladder through romance, really created a strain on him mentally,
and that strain caused a rapid decline in his mental health.
He went from initially exhibiting problems that manifested as irrational
angry outbursts to outright violence over a pretty short period
(22:41):
of time, including setting people's homes on fires, and while
the Marquise had gotten him medical attention. Initially, it did
not help, and so she eventually cut him off from
both her aid and his job completely. By sixteen sixty seven,
when his part in Denise story takes place, He's often
described as having been homeless, although that is not really accurate.
(23:02):
He did have a home, it was outside of Paris,
but he was often staying in the city and sleeping
on the street. Mahua was infamous in the city for
his deranged behavior, and Dennis thought that a transfusion might
cure him. Paris in the winter of sixteen sixty seven
was just exceptionally cold, and the challenges to just survive
(23:23):
were insurmountable for the city's poorest residents. Mahua had managed
to persist despite the elements and the odds being against him,
but he really was not in great health physically. At
this point. Denny had plotted with his surgeon Emirae, who
was still working with him, as well as other supporters,
to use Maoi. There was of course, no consent involved.
(23:46):
Maha was a fixture in the Marie district, so men
were sent there to look for him and capture him
if and when he was found In short, they were
instructed to kidnap him, which they did. He was then
taken to a hostel where his room and board were
paid until he was needed for the procedure, in part
so that he could have a period of regular meals
(24:06):
and a warm place to stay in the hopes of
bolstering his physical health before they tried this transfusion. The
second animal to human transfusion was performed at a private
residence belonging to Ari Louis de mal Moore, who was
a member of the King's Council and was born into wealth.
It was a wealth that had been augmented by his
(24:26):
father's embezzlement. While overseeing King Henry the fourth War Treasury.
Monmore was highly interested in science, and he had seen
Deny performed his public transfusion, and he was essentially using
Deny to bolster his own scientific academy. That was a
project that he had had in the works for some time,
(24:46):
and it was all but obliterated by the establishment of
the French Academy of Sciences by King Louis the fourteenth
in sixteen sixty six. Scientists of the French Academy had
attempted to replicate transfusions that had been done in England.
They were unsuccessful, so for Montmore, Denise seemed like the
key to outdoing them and reasserting his place as leader
(25:09):
in the scientific community of Paris. Since the public experiment
by pawt Neuf which Molmore had witnessed, he had been
serving as the niece patron and ensuring that he had
everything that he needed for these experiments. Yeah, he had. Similarly,
his academy he had been working on similarly had patronized
other scientists and made sure that they had lab space
(25:30):
at his compound. They had all of the tools they needed.
They didn't have to worry about you know, uh, room
and board. So he was this patron of scientists, but
it was all falling apart for him, and the night
the deny was to make his second transfusion attempt of
this nature, Momore had assembled a number of like minded dignitary's,
medical professionals and curious members of the Parisian elite. He
(25:54):
undoubtedly wanted people to know not only that Denny was
able to do this, but that he was the one
ankrolling it. There was a butcher on hand to see
to the drawing of blood from a calf that had
also been brought to the memoir home, and there was
also that same surgeon, Paul Emirae, who had been consulting
with Deny and who had prepared the room for the
transfusion with the various medical tools that they were going
(26:16):
to need. When Morea was brought into the room, it
was of course against his will. He was barefoot, he
was dressed in rags, and he tried to resist, but
was overpowered and tied up by the men that Momore
and Denise had assembled to help with this whole experiment.
By all accounts, this was a rather frenzied procedure. The
(26:36):
spectators on hand kept crowding around Deni and Emirae, so
both men began cursing and shouting at them, basically saying
you have to get back. Ten ounces of blood were
first drawn from Urroa and then the transfusion started, but
it wasn't entirely successful. Even on just a mechanical level, Emi,
Rae and Denny were only able to get about five
(26:58):
to six ounces of calves blood into Maha. Denny noted
that MAHA's temperature rose really sharply. He started to sweat,
and this means that he has the distinction of probably
having written the first known record of a hemolytic transfusion reaction.
That's a transfusion reaction where the blood recipient's immune system
(27:21):
rejects and destroys the red blood cells of the donor blood.
This experiment, of course, was well before we had any
understanding of blood groups, which wouldn't really get going into
the beginning of the twentieth century. And even so that
involved human blood and not calf's blood, so he and
m he did not really understand the cause of the
(27:42):
reaction that Mha was having, and because of the severity
of the reaction, when really just a tiny amount of
the calf's blood had been introduced, m Ray stopped the
procedure immediately. Marua was then taken to a room in
the Molmour home servant quarters to rest, and the spectacle
was over, and after lingering for a bit to murmur
(28:02):
over what they had just witnessed, Monmore's guests at last
went home. And that's where we're going to pause this story.
It's kind of a cliffhanger, might see a little cruel,
but we wanted to keep the events that happened next
on all of the ensuing court cases altogether is one
part of the story. Oh so much, so much blood.
(28:26):
All through this there's this like constant recurring uh like
voice in my head going, y'all, this is not a
good idea, not a good idea. And then we get
to this last one. I'm like, yes, seriously, not a
good idea, not a good idea, and just morally gross. Um.
There's a lot of moral grossness in this story. But
(28:48):
I have a story that is not really related to this,
but does involve some medical fun true fund It is
actually about our Point Setia episode. It is from our
listener Rose the Lee, who writes, Hello, Tracy and Holly.
First of all, I'm from Oklahoma with a parent from Arkansas,
So I say points Setta. Many people do. We've had
(29:08):
people I know on Twitter, even at my personal account
many people have noted that's how they say it. So
there you go. Uh. She continues, I wanted to send
a quick note about point Settia leaves. My mother also
loves Point setti is. When I was a wee, little
chunky toddler in the late eighties, my mom found me
surrounded by point Settia leaves and happily munching on something
(29:30):
being the wonderful nurse that she is and up to
date on all the research. She whisked me to the
hospital afraid I had poisoned myself after pumping my tummy.
A search of my stomach contents showed it was just
a banana, So no harm, no foul, and I have
a great story for two truths in a lie type intros.
I cannot imagine how hard it must have been at
(29:52):
the time, but it is good to know now that
I was in no real danger and we laugh about
it as a funny story now. I also wanted to
say how much I appreci it your thoughtfulness in telling
Jim Thorpe's story. Indigenous history is so little thought of
or disgust in a way that touches all of the complexities,
and I appreciate that you were willing to do that.
Thank you for the lovely podcast and work. Keep it up, Rosalie.
This is so cute. I love that it was a
(30:15):
harmless situation. Yeah. I I think I disclosed in our
poison control episode that my mother had to call poison
control on me multiple times in my childhood, so I
feel kind of a kinship here. I never had to
go to the hospital and give my stomach pumped. But
I definitely did eat some things that I really should
not have eaten. You know, kids are unwise and they
(30:37):
don't know and they learn about the world through testing it,
sometimes by eating it. Yes, and eating a banana is fine.
Eating a banana is fine unless you're allergic, which I
hope not many people are because bananas are lovely. But
if you would like to write to us, whether it
is about some medical mishap or not, you can do
(30:58):
so at History podcast at i heart radio dot com.
You can also find us on social media as Missed
in History, and you can subscribe to the show on
the I heart Radio app, at Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
(31:20):
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.