Richard Saumarez

Richard Saumarez FRS FRSE FSA FRCS (13 November 1764 – 27/28 January 1835) 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 (in my opinion) 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." (Biographia Literaria, Chapter 12)

Life

Saumarez 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

Saumarez 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 (née Enderby).

New Physiology Bacon, Hunter and True Science Saumarez dedicates his book on physiology to Dr. John Hunter amongst others.

To the late MR. J. HUNTER, to DR. GOODWIN, SPALLANZANI, and a few others, we are eminently indebted for many valuable facts obtained through the medium of experiments ... thereby manifesting the natural condition of things without altering it.

Three Systems of Matter Instead of the usual classification into animal, vegetable and mineral, Saumarez proposes a classification based on 'matter.'

I shall class the whole system of nature, as it has been called, and the matter of which it is composed, under the three distinct heads,— of common,—of living,—and of dead matter.

FIRST, By living matter, I comprehend the various orders of living beings with which the universe is replenished and adorned.

SECONDLY, By dead matter, I confine myself to the exuviæ of animals, and of vegetables; as well as to the whole substance of which these beings are composed, after the actions of life are at an end, and the state which is known by the appellation of death.

THIRDLY, By common matter, I mean the primitive, or original materials, or elements, of which the world is composed; matter which either, has never received the participation of life, or having received, has lost it, and been resolved back into a common state.

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.

Admitting these undeniable truths, the conclusion presses itself upon the mind with force irresistible, that these attributes must, of necessity, belong to a principle immaterial, and incorporeal, by whose activity, matter formless becomes organised;—by whose vivacity it becomes endowed with the power of action, and of motion; exerting the same influence, and governing by the same laws, every particle of this matter which it has assimilated; and constituting the power whence the organisation originates—the fountain, whence health and disease are made to flow. 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. [contains the germ of most of his subsequent writings]. 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.