Richard Saumarez


Richard Saumarez FRS FRSE FSA FRCS was a British surgeon and medical author.
Saumarez was a prolific writer, with advanced ideas regarding the subject of medicine and medical education. Coleridge identified and praised Saumarez for his "masterly force of reasoning, and the copiousness of induction, with which he has assailed, and subverted the tyranny of the mechanic system in physiology; established not only the existence of final causes, but their necessity and efficiency to every system that merits the name of philosophical; and, substituting life and progressive power for the contradictory inert force, has a right to be known and remembered as the first instaurator of the dynamic philosophy in England."

Life

He was born in Guernsey on 13 November 1764 to Matthieu Saumarez and Cartarette Le Marchant. Both parents died when he was young, and he later went to London to study medicine at the London Hospital. His older brothers were Admiral James Saumarez, 1st Baron de Saumarez and General Sir Thomas Saumarez
He trained under Sir William Blizard. He was admitted a member of the Company of Surgeons on 7 April 1785.
He married Martha Le Mesurier on 7 January 1786 in Guernsey. She died in 1801 and on 29 May 1804 he married a widow, Mrs Elizabeth Hetherington.
He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1834.
In 1788, Saumarez became surgeon to the Magdalen Hospital, Streatham, until 1 March 1805 when he was appointed an honorary governor.
He had a large and lucrative practice in London until 1818. He then retired to Bath, where he died at 21 The Circus on 28 January 1835.

New Physiology

Bacon, Hunter and True Science

Saumarez dedicates his book on physiology to Dr. John Hunter amongst others.
Saumarez also praises Bacon for having set down a true method of approach to nature, through direct observation based on clear ideas, not just the collection of facts.
True science for Saumarez is designed to analyse facts to arrive at the necessary historical understanding and basic or first principles which takes sense impression to understanding.
Saumarez argued that the level of knowledge in his day was poor and corrupted by false principles. In particular, the study of chemistry was not only still ignorant of the principles of "elective attraction," but sought to extend the principles that only held for dead and common matter to the realm of living matter.

Three Systems of Matter

Instead of the usual classification into animal, vegetable and mineral, Saumarez proposes a classification based on 'matter.'
Saumarez distinguishes between the property of living matter that is general and diffused through the whole system, and active - materia vitae diffusa - and that which is particular and dormant. The former maintains the preservative and participative capacity of a living organism. The principle of life is the principium vitae diffusum. We could also say that the former is the inherent capacity of the system to respond, and the latter is the result of the interaction of the former with the exciting powers, the stimuli of Dr. Brown and the Brunonian system of medicine. Saumarez claims that Hunter preceded Brown with his principle of a living principle, which Brown then expressed in the idea of excitation as the stimuli for bringing potential life or excitability to actual life or excitement.
Saumarez then also distinguishes between physiology and physics.

Different Laws for Different Systems of Matter

Each system of matter "not only in the progress of its evolution, but in the actions it performs, is governed and impelled by laws, distinct and peculiar".
The laws and principles governing dead or common matter cannot be employed to any useful end in understanding living matter. As an example, the "assimilating and convertible power" or "converting power of the assimilating organ" found in digestion, as "proved by Mr. Hunter and Spallanzani" cannot be explained by chemical laws and actions, but must be performed by a "living power resident in the organ and its secretions, in this case, that of the gastric juice of animals and man." From all of his observations of the facts from previous experiments, Saumarez is led to the logical conclusion that "the process of digestion...is not a chemical, but a living, act." He is further led to conclude that this living power, which is able to first dissolve, diffuse and then re-arrange external matter into a new unified form, "pervades throughout the whole range of animated existence" whether animal or vegetable. And the essence of this living power is that it is able to overcome the chemical laws, so that they resist being reduced to the elements.
Saumarez also addresses the living power of the mind which is necessary to relate to living sense experience.
This correlates with his contemporary Coleridge's view of the imagination as a creative power, that is "vital, even as all objects. As with Coleridge, Saumarez sees mind and consciousness to be a creative function that is higher and greater than sense-experience, indeed, as Coleridge puts it, "in the mind's self-experience there are evidently two powers at work, which relatively to each other are active and passive; and this is not possible without an intermediate faculty, which is at once both active and passive."

Duality of Living Power

Saumarez also sees that the nature of this living power is both sustentive and generative, and has been spoken of throughout history in different ways, including most recently by Dr. John Brown.

Organization of Life

Thus, what we see in living organisms is simply an organisation of powers, forces and energies according to real prototypes or ideas in the non-material, super-sensible domain. It is by way of this living power that health and disease derive.
This living power exists prior to any "organic action" and this pre-existing state Saumarez terms 'pre-disposition'. Like Brown, he also sees that the potential or dormant living power must be brought into action and motion.
Saumarez sees in the regular, organised functions and processes of living beings a unifying cause within the system itself, the living principle that keeps everything operating in a harmonious whole, both through the power of expansion, growth and that of containment or formation.

Living Power Not Simply Irritability

This living power is not to be equated or reduced to the nervous or sensitive power of plants and animals. The first is extensive throughout and the second is more limited in extent, as not all plants and animals have it, or it does not operate throughout the organism, absolutely or equally. The sensitive power, however, is generally prevalent in animals and gives them knowledge of the external world. The cause of sensation lies not so much in the object, but in the sensory organ receiving the impression. This sensitive power is the basis for the pleasure principle, and in its lower form, the instincts and their actions. In humans, however, there is something else besides the instincts.

Polarity Between Instinct and Consciousness

In man, the animal instincts must be mastered and converted by a higher power, that of self-consciousness through the power of rational thought. Instinctual action is not freedom, but the path of degeneration for man. Saumarez also speaks of the power of the mind to integrate sensations. These connect with Locke's ideas on self-consciousness and Coleridge's ideas, noted above regarding the power of imagination, both primary and later, in a more conscious way, secondary imagination.

Mind and Consciousness

Man is a reasoning and ideating being, not simply an instinctual one, and the development and evolution of consciousness allows him to direct and free himself from the compulsion of the instincts. As Saumarez states,
And this power of thought, an internal experience, is higher than that of sense experience. The objects of sense experience are there to help man perfect his self-awareness and self-consciousness and "perfect", that is, raise his mind and consciousness to higher levels, all the way up to spirit, the main concern of Romantic epistemology.
Like Brown, it is also those experiences that are agreeable or "congenial" that act to raise the mind and consciousness, and these resonant experiences then activate the mind to dwell on a higher and deeper, objective need against the subjective wants derived from the baser instincts.
This power of the mind for Saumarez is self-contained and self-referential.

Physiology: Examples

Saumarez provides many examples of living actions which cannot be explained by or reduced to chemical/physical processes.
After vegetable or animal food has been digested by a living system, the commutation it has sustained is total and complete...
Saumarez also takes from Hunter his example concerning the action of plant sap in a living and isolated context.
In another case that Saumarez provides we can also see the degeneration of living fluids, in this case hepatic bile, from a yellow, active state, to a greenish, almost black state when it becomes cystic bile. For Saumarez, this is a function of a law of nature governing organic action and involving a polarity between 'sensible' properties and 'living' properties, or between living matter and common matter.
In this regard, Saumarez also refers to functions of the mind, which increase as corporeal powers or vitality wanes, an idea also correlative to Coleridge's views on the creative imagination and mind, but also the reverse.

Writings

1. ‘A Dissertation on the Universe in general and on the Procession of the Elements in particular,’ London, 8vo, 1795.

2. ‘A New System of Physiology,’ London, 8vo, 1798, 2 vols.; 2nd edit. 8vo, 1799, 2 vols.; 3rd edit. 8vo, 1813, 2 vols. in 1.

3. ‘Principles of Physiological and Physical Science,’ London, 8vo, 1812.

4. ‘Oration before the Medical Society of London,’ 8vo, London, 1813.

5. ‘A Letter on the evil Effects of Absenteeism,’ 8vo, Bath, 1829.

6. ‘On the Function of Respiration in Health and Disease,’ Guernsey, 1832.

7. ‘Observations on Generation and the Principles of Life,’ in the ‘London Medical and Physical Journal,’ 1799, ii. 242, 321. .

8. 'On the principles and ends of philosophy: Comprehending an examination of the systems which now prevail and also a detail of the erroneous principles on... founded, and of the evils to which they tend' 1811.