Background

Félix-Archimède Pouchet was born on August 26, 1800, in Rouen, Arrondissement of Rouen, France. He was the son of an industrialist.

Education

Pouchet qualified in medicine after receiving his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1827 after studying at Rouen and at Paris.

Career

After Pouchet was qualified in medicine in 1827, almost immediately he became director of the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle at Rouen, an institution with which he was associated throughout the remainder of his life. In addition, Pouchet held teaching posts in Rouen, notably at the Ecole Superieure des Sciences et Lettres and the Ecole de Medecine.

A prolific author, Pouchet covered many areas of botany, zoology, physiology, and microbiology. He was also history-minded, writing, for instance, Histoire des sciences naturelles an moyen age (Paris, 1853). Widely read and, on many topics, of independent thought, Pouchet was also an excellent popularizer of science. Notable was his profusely illustrated general biology book, L'univers (Paris, 1865). “My sole object in writing this,” Pouchet commented in the preface, “was to inspire and to extend to the utmost of my power a taste for natural science.” In this, so far as can be judged, he was successful; certainly, the English edition was very popular. A great deal of Pouchet’s more specialized biological writing awaits detailed assessment, but it undoubtedly contains much of value: for instance, his clear recognition that human ovulation occurs within a limited period in the menstrual cycle.

Also, Pasteur became the leading opponent of spontaneous generation, publishing his “Memoire sur les corpuscules organises qui existent dans l’atmosphere” in 1861. In it, he claimed to have demonstrated that deposits from filtered air contained microorganisms or, at least, “organized corpuscles,” and that their removal by heat or filtration meant that no growth occurred in sterilized nutrient media. This formed an important part of Pasteur’s evidence for his outright repudiation of spontaneous generation. Although a commission of the Academie des Sciences accepted Pasteur’s results in 1864, the controversies lasted until the late 1870s, largely because of the conflicting experimental evidence that continued to appear.

The lasting value of the work of Pouchet and his supporters, now no longer held to be valid, was that it gave a great impetus to improving experimental technique in microbiology, which contributed to the rapid development of the subject during the last decades of the nineteenth century.

Achievements

• 

  In terms of Pouchet’s wide-ranging contributions to biology, he is chiefly remembered as the defeated adversary of Pasteur over the question of whether microorganisms could be spontaneously generated, although this was the most fundamental problem with which Pouchet dealt. Pouchet wrote much on the subject, but it was his Heterogenie ou traite de la generation spontanee base sur de noiivelles experiences (Paris, 1859) that did much to arouse widespread interest.
  
  Pouchet reported a great many experiments of his own and of others in which microorganisms appeared in nutrient media although rigorous attempts were made to avoid contamination.
  
  He also wrote a layperson's encyclopedia The Universe, published in 1870, which gives an overview of the sciences, but in which Pouchet ridicules Louis Pasteur's theories (calling them panspermism) and atomic theory.
  
  Another Pouchet's great achievement was in his effective establishment of the study of the physiology of cytology, which he launched in 1847.
  
  A member of many learned societies and corresponding member of the Academie des Sciences, he became chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1843.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Zoologie Classique

    (Volume 1)

    1841
  • Zoologie Classique, ou Histoire Naturelle du Règne Animal, Vol. 2: Contenant les Animaux Invertébrés

    (Vol.2)

    1841
  • The universe, or, The infinitely great and the infinitely little 1865
  • Moeurs Et Instincts Des Animaux 1897
  • Histoire Des Sciences Naturelles Au Moyen Age: Ou, Albert Le Grand Et Son Epoque Consideres Comme Point de Depart de L'Ecole Experimentale 1853
  • Albert Le Grand Et Son Époque Considérés Comme Point De Départ De L'école Expérimentale 1853
  • Recherches & expériences sur les animaux ressuscitants 1842
  • Heterogenie; Ou, Traite de La Generation Spontanee, Base Sur de Nouvelles Experiences 1859
  • Nouvelles Expériences sur la Génération Spontanée Et la Résistance Vitale 1864
  • Théorie Positive de la Fécondation Des Mammifères, Observation de Toute La Série Animale 1847
  • Flore, ou Statistique botanique de la Seine-Inferieure 1834
  • Notice biographique sur Louis-Ezéchias Pouchet, négociant à Rouen, membre de la Société d'émulation de Rouen 1866

Views

Pouchet held that three factors - putrescent organic matter, air, and water - were the absolutely necessary conditions for spontaneous generation, which could be aided by, for instance, electricity and sunlight. Specifying the effects of light, Pouchet said that red light promoted the formation of animal “proto-organisms” and green light, vegetable “proto-organisms.”

Pouchet naturally took great pains over the basic issue - whether contamination by existing organisms could account for apparent instances of spontaneous generation. He paid particular attention to airborne particles (“atmospheric micrography,” as he called it), collecting them by such means as passing air through distilled water and obtaining deposits. From the subsequent microscopic examination of the particles he recorded the presence of starch, cloth fibers, and carbon and mineral particles.

He concluded that the air contained only an occasional fungal spore or encysted infusorian, thus making airborne contamination highly unlikely. The fact that spontaneous generation apparently followed, under appropriate conditions, the use of heat-“sterilized” air also supported this view.

He also demonstrated reservations in spontaneous generation by supporting the beliefs of Christian Ehrenberg. Ehrenberg believed that infusoria had complex organ systems while other protozoologists, like Fèlix Dujardin, believed that infusoria were simple organisms that could appear spontaneously. Pouchet did not seem very interested in spontaneous generation during this time, and instead studied ovule production and menstruation.

Quotations: "The more we study nature the grander does she appear. Science, by penetrating her secrets, often shows us the hidden and imposing forces exist where we only see inertia."

Membership

French Academy of Sciences

Interests

• history

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Christian Ehrenberg

Connections

Son:

Charles Henri Georges Pouchet

26 February 1833 – 29 March 1894, he was a French naturalist and anatomist.

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  1975