Lead Poisoning in France around 1840: Managing Proofs and Uncertainties in Laboratories, Courtrooms, and Workplaces.

This article reviews one of the most famous cases of lead poisoning in France, the Ponchon affair, which occurred in 1843 during a crucial period for French toxicology. The trial attracted public attention and inflamed controversy among medical and legal experts. The debate involved toxicological methods and their reliability, and gave rise to more general questions about the value of expert evidence, the way it was presented in court, and its relationship to other forms of legal evidence. I begin with a general overview of lead poisoning and toxicological research on lead compounds around 1840. I then discuss different toxicological proofs employed for detecting or preventing lead poisoning and examine as well growing uncertainties about them. A review of several trials related to lead poisoning in workplaces around 1840 introduces the Ponchon affair. Here I present the experts involved in the trial and describe their strategies for presenting and managing proofs and uncertainties. Finally, I summarise the controversy aroused by the trial in medical and legal communities as it relates to the value of jury trials in cases of poisoning, the risks of using too much chemistry in judicial inquiries, and the different proposals for managing uncertainties and disagreements among experts.

Ciencia y justicia en los tiempos del cólera: el misterio de los bizcochos de Torroja (1865) / Science and law in the time of cholera: the mystery of the biscuits in torroja (1865)

A través de un caso de envenenamiento colectivo de 1865, se analizan cuatro ingredientes característicos de las culturas forenses: las tecnologías de la prueba, las voces autorizadas, el marco legislativo en acción y las ansiedades sociales predominantes. Se emplean noticias de prensa local y la documentación conservada en las academias de medicina de Barcelona y Madrid. El caso estudiado muestra las tensiones entre diversos tipos de pruebas y las ambigüedades en el diagnóstico de enfermedades epidémicas y envenenamientos. Se estudia, en primer lugar, los temores provocados por la epidemia de cólera de 1865, con el que se asociaron inicialmente las muertes. También se analizan los cambios de percepción en la población a través de las noticias aparecidas. Se reconstruye de este modo la situación que condicionó la investigación judicial y la labor posterior de los peritos. Se estudian las limitaciones económicas para la implantación del cuerpo de médicos forenses y las tensiones entre médicos y farmacéuticos respecto a la gestión de los diferentes tipos de pruebas

By focussing on a case of collective poisoning in 1865, four features of forensic cultures are analysed: technologies for detection, authorized voices, regulations in action and the predominant social anxieties. Local newspapers and archival documents kept in the medical academies of Barcelona and Madrid are analysed. The analysis shows the tensions between various types of proof employed in legal medicine and the ambiguities between epidemic diseases and poisoning accidents. In the first section, I review the fears caused by the cholera epidemic in 1865, which was the first explanation of the accident. The changes of popular perception are also discussed by analysing contemporary newspapers. I also reconstruct the social anxieties that constrained the judicial investigation and the subsequent work of the experts. I study the lack of economic and manpower support for the development the new organization of forensic physicians and, finally, I review the controversies between doctors and pharmacists regarding the management of the different types of toxicological proofs

From forensic toxicology to biological chemistry: Normal arsenic and the hazards of sensitivity during the nineteenth century.

This paper reviews the cultural meanings, social uses and circulations of arsenic in different legal, medical and popular settings. The focus is on nineteenth-century France. In the first section, I review the advent of the Marsh test for arsenic, which is commonly regarded as a milestone in the history of toxicology. I claim that the high sensitivity of the Marsh test introduced puzzling problems for forensic doctors, the most disturbing one being the so-called 'normal arsenic.' I reconstruct early research on normal arsenic and the ensuing controversies in courts, academies and salons. A report from the French Academy of Science converted normal arsenic from a big discovery to an experimental mistake. In the next section, I study how these disturbing conclusions were perceived by toxicologists all over Europe and how normal arsenic disappeared from view by the middle of the nineteenth century. Finally, I review the return of normal arsenic thanks to Armand Gautier and Gabriel Bertrand, who introduced an innovative research framework and so prompted the displacement of arsenic from criminal toxicology to pharmacology and nutrition science. The last section will also show that the issue of normal arsenic was recaptured in public debates concerning criminal poisoning at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Experts and Peripheries: Ongoing Research and Future Challenges.

Based on existing research on Spain and Greece, the essay is focused upon the activity of experts in criminal courts and advisory committees. Following the experts in these settings, we offer examples of their roles in governing techno-sciences in societies of the European periphery. We highlight the tensions between the creative powers of localities and the movement of expert knowledge in a world marked by striking inequalities concerning economic, political and academic power. We claim that a comparative study of these movements will be refine the historical understanding of experts and expertise.

Chemistry, microscopy and smell: bloodstains and nineteenth-century legal medicine.

This paper analyses the development of three methods for detecting bloodstains during the first half of the nineteenth-century in France. After dealing with the main problems in detecting bloodstains, the paper describes the chemical tests introduced in the mid-1820s. Then the first uses of the microscope in the detection of bloodstains around 1827 are discussed. The most controversial method is then examined, the smell test introduced by Jean-Pierre Barruel in 1829, and the debates which took place in French academies and learned societies during ensuing years are surveyed. Moving to the courtrooms a review is conducted of how the different methods were employed in criminal trials. By reviewing these cases, the main arguments against Barruel's test during the 1830s are explored as well as the changes making possible the return of the microscope to legal medicine around 1840. By reconstructing the history of these three methods, the paper reveals how the senses of smell and vision (colours and microscopic images) were employed in order to produce convincing evidence in both academies and courts. The paper questions two linear master narratives that are organized in terms of progress and decline: the development of forensic science as a result of continued technological progress; and the supposed decline of smell in the history of the senses, particularly in the realm of chemistry and medicine.

Managing uncertainty in the academy and the courtroom: normal arsenic and nineteenth-century toxicology.

This essay explores how the enhanced sensitivity of chemical tests sometimes produced unforeseen and puzzling problems in nineteenth-century toxicology. It focuses on the earliest uses of the Marsh test for arsenic and the controversy surrounding "normal arsenic"--that is, the existence of traces of arsenic in healthy human bodies. The essay follows the circulation of the Marsh test in French toxicology and its appearance in the academy, the laboratory, and the courtroom. The new chemical tests could detect very small quantities of poison, but their high sensitivity also offered new opportunities for imaginative defense attorneys to undermine the credibility of expert witnesses. In this context, toxicologists had to dispel the uncertainty associated with the new method and come up with arguments to refute the many possible criticisms of their findings, among them the appeal to normal arsenic. Meanwhile, new descriptions of animal experiments, autopsies, and cases of poisoning produced a steady flow of empirical data, sometimes supporting but in many cases questioning previous conclusions about the reliability of the chemical tests. This challenging scenario provides many clues about the complex interaction between science and the law in the nineteenth century, particularly how expert authority, credibility, and trustworthiness were constructed, and frequently challenged, in the courtroom.

Animal experiments, vital forces and courtrooms: Mateu Orfila, François Magendie and the study of poisons in nineteenth-century France.

The paper follows the lives of Mateu Orfila and François Magendie in early nineteenth-century Paris, focusing on their common interest in poisons. The first part deals with the striking similarities of their early careers: their medical training, their popular private lectures, and their first publications. The next section explores their experimental work on poisons by analyzing their views on physical and vital forces in living organisms and their ideas about the significance of animal experiments in medicine. The last part describes their contrasting research on the absorption of poisons and the divergences in their approaches, methods, aims, standards of proof, and intended audiences. The analysis highlights the connections between nineteenth-century courtrooms and experimental laboratories, and shows how forensic practice not only prompted animal experimentation but also provided a substantial body of information and new research methods for dealing with major theoretical issues like the absorption of poisons.

Louis Jacques Thenard's chemistry courses at the College de France, 1804-1835.

This article is concerned with the public courses and lecture demonstrations given by Louis Jacques Thenard at the College de France during the first decades of the nineteenth century. The expectations and needs of Thenard's auditors will be studied in order to understand the role played by chemistry courses at the College in the context of the growing and changing Parisian teaching market during the first third of the nineteenth century. The preparation and performance of lecture demonstrations was the main driving force of several major changes in the premises and the personnel associated with the chair of chemistry. Our analysis of the parallel process of expansion and functional differentiation of spaces and personnel will show the multiple interactions taking place between the research and teaching activities developed by Thenard and his team of assistants and students.

Looking for an order of things: textbooks and chemical classifications in nineteenth century France.

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the issue of the creativity of textbook writing by exploring the links between nineteenth-century French textbooks and the quest for a classification of elements. The first section presents the elegant combination of didactic and chemical constraints invented by eighteenth-century chemists: the order of learning - from the known to the unknown - and the order of things - from the simple to the complex - were one and the same. In section two we argue that the alleged coincidence did not help the authors of elementary textbooks required for the new schools set up by the French revolution. Hence the variety of classifications adopted in the early nineteenth century. A debate between natural and artificial classifications raised a tension in the 1830s without really dividing the chemical community. Rather it ended up with the adoption of a hybrid classification, combining the rival natural and artificial systems.

Viajes a Francia para el estudio de la química, 1770-1833

Los viajes científicos a Francia durante último tercio del siglo XVIII y el primero del siglo XIX son generalmente considerados, por diversas razones, como una importante cuestión en el desarrollo de la ciencia española de ese período. Los viajes científicos de los pensionados y comisionados de la Ilustración suelen estudiarse como un vehículo de transmisión de nuevas ideas científicas. Por el contrario, el exilio de autores afrancesados y liberales suele valorarse negativamente, como una de las causas de la decadencia de la ciencia española del primer tercio del siglo XIX. En este trabajo se pretende ofrecer un marco general para el estudio de estos viajes y presentar algunas de las primeras conclusiones de un análisis comparado de un grupo de biografías de estos viajeros. También se presentan los datos obtenidos del análisis de diferentes fuentes documentales poco conocidas y un esquema de periodificación de estos viajes (AU)