Lamy, Guillaume

(b. Coutances, France; d. Paris, France [?])

philosophy, medicine.

Lamy’s dates of birth and death are completely uncertain' the only ones we can be sure of are those of his publications. It is known that he was born in the old Norman city of Coutances. None of his few biographers gives a birth date for him, and the destruction of the archives of Saint-Lô, in particular the baptismal registers, during the 1944 invasion makes research impossible. The notes of a scholar mention the marriage in Coutances of “Me. Guillaume Lamy, fils de feu Me. Bernard Lamy” on 16 May 1654. If he was then twenty years old, he would have been born in 1634. Accordingly, one is astonished to find that it was in 1672 (when, presumably, he was thirty-eight) taht he received his doctorate from the Faculty of Medicine at pairs. Before this date—which is subject to doubt—be had already published (1668 and 1669) three works that are dated. In the first of these he is designated “Maistre aux Arts.” That is, having completed the sequence of courses at the University of Paris and having defended a thesis in philosophy, he had the right to teach the humanities.

In 1669 Lamy published De principiis rerum (in octavo, 400 pages) that testifies to his vocation as a philosopher. In one of the opening sections of this book Lamy sets forth the Peripatetic views on the definition of matter, the nature of substantial form, and the qualities of objects. His method is to develop each point of doctrine successively and to refute it immediately afterward. Book II of this work is a presentation and critique of Cartesian thought conducted in the same manner. Lamy attacks Descartes’s methodic doubt and his proofs for the existence of God, and shows how Descartes’s statements concerning the principles of natural things display a great affinity with the thought of Democritus and Epicurus. Book III is a systematic account of the thought of Epicurus as it is presented in Lucretius. In addition, Lamy shows on what points modern science has clarified and developed these ideas. His position in thus close to that of Gassendi, although he criticizes certain of the latter’s opinions. Lamy’s concern to harmonize philosophy and science is evident two appendices, one devoted to the weight of the air and the vacuum and the other to fermentation.

Lamy’s interest in the problems of life, however, led him to study medicine. Delaunay informs us that “in order to be inducted as a doctor of the very beneficent Faculty of Paris,” one had to count on five to eight years of study. Since Lamy was admitted as a doctor in 1672, he must have commenced his medical studies no latter than 1667. In that year he published Lettre à M. Moreau contre l’utilité de la transfusion, followed by a second letter in the same year. The year 1667 was decisive in the history of transfusion: the young Académie des Sciences carried out a series of experiments on dogs that led it to recommend against the practice. Lamy was one of the first who dared to contradict the advocates of transfusion. He asserted that this operation is more a means of tormenting the ill than of curing them.

After earnings his degree Lamy concerned himself chiefly with medical questions. Between 1675 and 1682 he published three important works. The best-known of these works, Discours anatomiques, went through several editions (Paris, 1675 and 1685; Brussels, 1679). Lamy indicates that these discourses were written in conjunction with the presentation of cadaver at the residence of a well-known surgeon. From precise details he ascends to the nobility of philosophical ideas. In as style now light and now grave he addresses to “Monsieur Notre Adversaire” profound words that appeal by their rationality and reveal a thinker who has deeply meditated on the phenomena of life.

The first discourse warns against the tendency to “exaggerate the nobility of man.” Man, according to Lamy, receives from nature the same advantages and the same misfortunes as the beasts. His organization is not more perfect and he lacks apparatuses, such as wings, that a Galen would marvel at as a typically human attribute if man possessed them. Reasoning, Lamy affirms, must exclude finalism, even if one risks being accused of impiety—as Lamy in fact was. The study of the parts and membranes of the body constitutes the major portion of this discourse. The second discourse, devoted to the abdomen, is written from the same point of view. It is the arrangement of the atoms that defines the properties of matter: “Do not say that the eyes are made for seeing; we see because we have eyes.” The third discourse is a study of the organs that covert the chyle into blood. The fourth treats the mammary glands and the milk, which Lamy thinks undoubtedly originates in the chyle. In this discourse he also considers the heart. It is enveloped, he asserts, in a useless membrane (pericardium). The heart causes the movement of the blood; the various liquors separate out in the organs that the blood passes through as it circulates. In the firth discourse Lamy discusses the organs of generation. He is a convinced partisan of the Hippocratic theory of the double semen. Discourse VI is devoted to the brain. The soul, he affirms, does not know itself or the structure of its dwelling. Lamy declares that he is convinced of the immortality of the soul “by … Christian faith” and not at all “as a philosopher.”

1677 Lamy published Explication mécanique et physique des fonctions de l’âme sensitive, in which he claimed that the mechanical explanation of the senses, of the passions, and of voluntary motion is necessarily a succession of risky hypothesis. The Explication was followed by Discours sur la génération du laict and Dissertation contre la nouvelle opinion qui prétend que tous les animaux sont engendrés d'un oeuf. Lamy stated that in this latter domain Harvey had not convinced him. Moreover, after criticizing the new views on logical grounds, he returned to the Hippocratic schema he had presented in the “Discours”; according to it the new being originates in the mixture of two seminal liquids.

Dissertation sur l’antimoine (1682) is the last work Lamy published. Renewing the “antimony war,” ended fifteen years earlier by decrees of the Faculty of Medicine and of the Parlement condemning the thesis that rejected the use of antimony, Blondel, a former dean, and Douté, his brother-in-law, had challenged Lamy to write in favor of antimony. His work, approved by the highest medical authorities, sets froth the physical reasons for the harmlessness of antimony and the virtues of the preparations that can be made from it. Most notably it illustrates Lamy’s wish that medicine benefit from the new discoveries made in anatomy and chemistry.

Lamy thus possessed the qualities of both the scientist who desires progress and the rationalist who is not afraid to dismiss novelties that do not satisfy the demands of reason.

Lamy expressed his opinions forcefully. He was in turn profound, witty, and ironic—Haller called him impius homo. His influence was considerable. Revéillé Parise, the only author to attempt a biography of him, wrote: “In the period in which he lived, his name resounded in all the Faculties of France and in the foreign universities.” At the Faculty of Medicine of Paris his name is included in the list of the honorandorum magistrorum nostrorum, signed by Dean Le Moine in 1676. Popular with the public because of the originality of his remarks, Lamy had fervent disciples and impassioned enemies: he replied to the attacks of the latter on several occasions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. In view of the almost complete absence of a real biography of Lamy, the titles of all works published by him have been given in the text, along with dates and an analysis.

II. Secondary Literautre. N. F. J. Eloy, Dictionnaire historique de la médeine ancienne et moderne, III (Mons, 1778), p. 8, contains a very short bibliography listing the principal publications and reflecting Portal’s confusion of LAmy with alain Amy, a physician born in Caen: Portal attributes Lamy’s works to him. Joseph Henri Revéillé-Parise, “étude biographique: Guillaume LAmy,” in Gazette médiale de PAris, 3rd ser., 6 (1851), 497–502, gives a summary and of course incomplete biography; it includes an analysis of the anatomical discourses. ALphonse Pauly, Bibliographie des sciences médicales (Paris, 1874), in a section devoted to individual biographies, gives only Lamy’s name and a reference to Revéillé-Parise’s article. J. Levy-Valensi, LA médecine et les médecins français au XVII siécle (Paris, 1933), does not devote an article to LAmy, but he is mentioned in the text in connection with teh “antimony war.” Jacques Roger, Les sciences de la vie dans la pensée fançaise du XVIII^e siécle, thesis (Paris, 1933), does not devote an article to Lamy, but he is mentioned in the text in connection with teh” antimony war.” Jacques Roger, Les sciences de la vie dans la pensée française de XVIII^e siécle, thesis (Paris, 1963), mentions LAmy's name about thirty times and devotes several pages entirely to him.

L. Plantefol