Speaker 1: Peter Mark Roget was born on January eighteenth, seventeen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: or two hundred and forty six years ago today, so
Speaker 1: our episode on him and his thesaurus is today's Saturday Classic.
Speaker 1: We mention a couple of subjects in this episode that
Speaker 1: we've covered since then. Our episode on Francis Henry Edgerton,
Speaker 1: a thirle of Bridgewater, which I specifically said would be
Speaker 1: covered later, came out on February twenty first, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: And our two parter that covered Humphrey davies self experimentation
Speaker 1: with nitrous oxide was a two parter that started on
Speaker 1: April twenty ninth, twenty twenty four. This originally came out
Speaker 1: February second, twenty twenty two. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a safe bet that if you've
Speaker 1: done any amount of writing, you have probably stumbled across
Speaker 1: Rose's thesaurus. Yeah, that's I think one of my earliest
Speaker 1: experiences of like, here are resources in the library. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: and Rose was a person, Peter Mark Roge. He was
Speaker 1: a doctor and a scientist who really liked putting things
Speaker 1: into classification systems. But his life was quite dramatic, well
Speaker 1: before he put together the book that is his legacy,
Speaker 1: and today we are going to talk all about that.
Speaker 1: We want to give you a heads up that this
Speaker 1: episode contains discussion of suicide and some detailed discussion because
Speaker 1: of an event that shaped Roget's life. So if you
Speaker 1: would like to skip that, jump ahead about two to
Speaker 1: three minutes to the first ad break, starting when we
Speaker 1: mentioned the year eighteen eighteen. Peter Mark Roge was born
Speaker 1: on January eighteenth, seventeen seventy nine, in London. His father,
Speaker 1: Jean Roget, was Genevieve's pastor who had moved to England
Speaker 1: as an adult. He died when Peter was just four
Speaker 1: years old. His mother was Catherine Romilly, and her brother,
Speaker 1: the abolitionist, legal reformer and politician, Sir Samuel Romilly, became
Speaker 1: a significant figure in Peter's life. After his father died,
Speaker 1: Peter referred to his uncle as his surrogate father. Peter's mother, Catherine,
Speaker 1: has been characterized by a biographers as domineering. She was
Speaker 1: very involved in her son's life. She likely had depression
Speaker 1: and sometimes she exhibited paranoia, and she really really pushed
Speaker 1: her son to be an achiever. When Peter was just fourteen,
Speaker 1: his mother moved the entire family, including his sister Annette,
Speaker 1: who likely also had depression, to Edinburgh, Scotland, so that
Speaker 1: Peter could study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He
Speaker 1: did not only take classes intended to prepare him for
Speaker 1: a career as a doctor, though he also loved and
Speaker 1: studied literature and philosophy. In seventeen ninety eight, the age
Speaker 1: of nineteen, Roge graduated from medical school. Even in this
Speaker 1: early stage of his life, he had this proclivity to
Speaker 1: study the classification and organization of things that was really apparent.
Speaker 1: His medical school thesis, which was about chemical affinities, invoked
Speaker 1: the work of Carl Naeus and his classification system, as
Speaker 1: well as others who had used it in their work.
Speaker 1: One of Roge's first projects out of school was, unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: a system of classification. This was very, very broad in scope.
Speaker 1: He wanted to sort all knowledge into three categories. The
Speaker 1: first was the material world, which focused on natural history.
Speaker 1: The second was the intellectual World, which included all manner
Speaker 1: of philosophies, theories and belief systems. And the third was
Speaker 1: the World of Signs, which was really about words and communication,
Speaker 1: and he collaborated on this work with a philosopher, Dougald Stewart,
Speaker 1: but it was never published. In seventeen ninety nine, rog
Speaker 1: was published for the first time in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Thomas Beddows. This is a series of notes regarding consumption
Speaker 1: as it related to various professions. Roget also joined Beto's
Speaker 1: research facility, the Pneumatic Medical Institution that was in Bristol, England.
Speaker 1: In Bedows's group, Roge worked alongside Humphrey Davy experimenting with
Speaker 1: gases and their possible medical uses. One of the things
Speaker 1: that they worked on were possible pain management or sedative
Speaker 1: uses for gases like nitrous oxide. They actually published a
Speaker 1: paper about it in eighteen hundred that was more than
Speaker 1: forty years before such things were ever used in dental
Speaker 1: work or surgery, and in some cases the researchers were
Speaker 1: also experiment subjects. Roge wrote about his own experience with
Speaker 1: nitrous oxide, which for him was quite disorienting. Quote, I
Speaker 1: seemed to lose the sense of my own weight and
Speaker 1: imagined I was sinking into the ground. I then felt
Speaker 1: a drowsiness gradually steal over me, and a day this
Speaker 1: inclination to motion, I was gradually roused from this torpor
Speaker 1: by a kind of delirium. I felt myself totally incapable
Speaker 1: of speaking, and for some time lost all consciousness of
Speaker 1: where I was or who was near me. Roget did
Speaker 1: not stay with the Bedos Institute for very long. He
Speaker 1: left Bristol in eighteen hundred and moved east to London.
Speaker 1: There he continued his medical studies by working with a
Speaker 1: number of prominent physicians of the day. What of those
Speaker 1: was Edward Jenner. Yeah. His connections throughout his life kind
Speaker 1: of read like the checklist of important scientists and doctors
Speaker 1: of the period. Peter Roget also made money during this
Speaker 1: time as a private tutor. He was hired to educate
Speaker 1: two boys, Burton and Nathaniel Phillips, and also to travel
Speaker 1: with them on a year long trip around Europe. Roge
Speaker 1: was twenty three when they started their trip, heading first
Speaker 1: to Paris, where things started out quite well. They visited museums,
Speaker 1: they walked the city, and they took in the culture
Speaker 1: and although Roget was not exactly in love with French life.
Speaker 1: He wrote some very disparaging things about the French people.
Speaker 1: He was happy to be making money and traveling, and
Speaker 1: when they moved on to Geneva he found that to
Speaker 1: be quite enjoyable. But then they got trapped there. On
Speaker 1: May eighteenth, eighteen oh three, Britain declared war on France,
Speaker 1: and Napoleon Bonaparte declared that all adult British citizens and
Speaker 1: French territories were prisoners of war. That means Roget was
Speaker 1: part of that group. Much to his shock and surprise.
Speaker 1: His charges, though, were not affected. They were under eighteen,
Speaker 1: and he didn't just want to send them off on
Speaker 1: their own, hoping they would make it home safely. They
Speaker 1: tried to petition the French government for an exemption because
Speaker 1: of their situation, but when that failed, he started reaching
Speaker 1: out to their father's business contacts in Switzerland to try
Speaker 1: to find these boys a safe haven. He moved the
Speaker 1: boys first to Lausanne and then to Nuqtel. Then he
Speaker 1: did something ingenius. So if you'll remember we mentioned at
Speaker 1: the top of this episode that his father, Jean Roget,
Speaker 1: was from Geneva, Peter did an impressive bit of bureaucratic dancing,
Speaker 1: and in less than twenty four hours he managed to
Speaker 1: track down his deceased father's birth certificate and a government
Speaker 1: official to provide certification that Peter was Jean's son and
Speaker 1: thus eligible for Genevieve's citizenship. This whole business had, according
Speaker 1: to Roge, required a bribe. This let him get a
Speaker 1: limited passport to rejoin the Phillips brothers, but then to
Speaker 1: get home they had to sneak through small towns, never
Speaker 1: speaking English in front of anybody, making some more bribes
Speaker 1: along the way. Eventually they got to unoccupied Germany and
Speaker 1: from there they were able to get passage home. Roge
Speaker 1: later wrote of this ordeal quote, it is impossible to
Speaker 1: describe the rapture we felt in treading on friendly ground.
Speaker 1: It was like awaking from a horrid dream, or recovering
Speaker 1: from a nightmare. Back in England, in eighteen o five,
Speaker 1: Roge moved to Manchester and took a job at the
Speaker 1: public Infirmary. In addition to his work as a public
Speaker 1: health physician, he also put together a lecture series there
Speaker 1: several in fact, the first was eighteen lecturers grouped together
Speaker 1: as an offering of the College of Arts and Sciences,
Speaker 1: and in these classes he returned, as ever to his
Speaker 1: love of classification to form the curriculum. Physiology was broken
Speaker 1: down into four units of classification covering the human respiratory, nervous,
Speaker 1: mechanical and reproductive functions. He also taught animal physiology, although
Speaker 1: that was separated out into a different course of fifteen lectures.
Speaker 1: Because of his efforts and assembling those educational courses, he's
Speaker 1: credited with starting Manchester's first medical school, but Manchester didn't
Speaker 1: keep Roge for long either. In eighteen oh eight he
Speaker 1: moved once again to London. He set up a private
Speaker 1: practice but also continued teaching. This time it was at
Speaker 1: the Russell Institution, and he built on the lecture plans
Speaker 1: he had worked on in Manchester. In eighteen oh nine
Speaker 1: he finally gained his Royal College of Physicians license, and
Speaker 1: at that point he joined the Medical and Triururgical Society.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eleven he became the Society's secretary, and in
Speaker 1: that role he headed up to society's periodical transactions. In
Speaker 1: eighteen twelve he published his own paper in it, which
Speaker 1: was about the detection of arsenic in poisoning cases. That
Speaker 1: same year he also became the professor of Comparative anatomy
Speaker 1: at the Royal Institution. Throughout his time as a lecturer there,
Speaker 1: establishing a framework of classification for any subject was always
Speaker 1: imparted in his lectures. One of the major concepts he
Speaker 1: was working on through all of his practice and teaching
Speaker 1: was the idea that the brain itself was subconsciously classifying
Speaker 1: things just as part of a person's perception of the world,
Speaker 1: and he referred to the brain as quote an organ
Speaker 1: of association. He innovated outside of physiology inventing a device
Speaker 1: in a eighteen fourteen that he called a log log scale.
Speaker 1: This it was a spiral slide rule that could add
Speaker 1: the logarithms of logarithms. The paper on this was published
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifteen and it contributed to Roget becoming a
Speaker 1: Fellow of the Royal Society of London. Eighteen fifteen also
Speaker 1: marked the beginning of a new job that was decidedly
Speaker 1: in Peter Rose's lane. He started working with Encyclopedia Britannica,
Speaker 1: and his writing there included biographies of various scientists and
Speaker 1: thinkers of the day, as well as articles about medical
Speaker 1: science itself, and this writing truthfully is a little bit
Speaker 1: of a mixed bag if you look at it now.
Speaker 1: It was all pretty advanced for the early nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: but today, obviously a lot of it is outdated or
Speaker 1: just flat out wrong. He wrote a significant article on
Speaker 1: the kaleidoscope, which expanded available knowledge of optics in the
Speaker 1: workings of the human eye, and he produced a lengthy
Speaker 1: article on physiology, and in that physiology writing he continued
Speaker 1: to espouse his approach to categorize the workings of the
Speaker 1: human body. This was where an area that roget had
Speaker 1: been interested in really came to the forefront. That was
Speaker 1: the nervous system. At this time, knowledge of the nervous
Speaker 1: system and exactly how it functioned were still pretty primitive.
Speaker 1: That was something Roge acknowledged in his writing, But he
Speaker 1: did note, as others before him had, that the nervous
Speaker 1: system quote bears a greater resemblance to the transmission of
Speaker 1: the electric agency along conducting wires than to any other
Speaker 1: fact we are acquainted with in nature. In eighteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: Rogee's family went through a horrible series of tragedies. It
Speaker 1: began with his aunt Anne, that was the wife of
Speaker 1: Sir Samuel Romilly, dying of cancer on October twenty ninth
Speaker 1: of that year. Peter had been her doctor. Samuel had
Speaker 1: been at her bedside for weeks in the end, for
Speaker 1: going sleep and food, and once she died, his own
Speaker 1: physical and mental health quickly declined from the neglect and
Speaker 1: the stress of the situation. On November two, Sir Romilly
Speaker 1: asked his daughter Sophia to go get Peter roget. Peter
Speaker 1: was also his doctor, so this wasn't a surprising request
Speaker 1: for somebody who was obviously ill, But when Rosee arrived,
Speaker 1: it became apparent immediately that this errand had been a ruse.
Speaker 1: Romilly had wanted privacy because he intended to end his life.
Speaker 1: Once Sophia had left, he had cut his own throat,
Speaker 1: and Peter arrived just afterward. Rose tried to treat his uncle,
Speaker 1: but after scribbling down the cryptic words quote my dear
Speaker 1: I wish on a piece of paper, Romily died in
Speaker 1: his arms. After that, Peter's mother, Catherine, also fell into
Speaker 1: her own deep depression. She became very, very paranoid. She
Speaker 1: was certain that the house staff was working toward her demise,
Speaker 1: and she progressively became kind of closed off from everyone.
Speaker 1: She alternated between paranoid episodes in near catatonia for the
Speaker 1: remains of her life. Coming up, we'll talk about how
Speaker 1: Peter Roget's work at the lectern was what helped get
Speaker 1: him through all of this. First, though, we'll take a
Speaker 1: quick sponsor break. Unsurprisingly, given what he had just been through,
Speaker 1: Peter took several months off of work after his uncle's death,
Speaker 1: and he also wrote to a friend that his confidence
Speaker 1: was deeply shaken. He wasn't even sure he should be
Speaker 1: a doctor anymore. But he also knew that he couldn't
Speaker 1: easily switch professions at that point in his life, and
Speaker 1: so he restarted his career sort of by going back
Speaker 1: to lecturing at the Royal Institution. He described it as
Speaker 1: like starting at the bottom of the ladder and just rebuilding.
Speaker 1: But his lectures there were very well received and very
Speaker 1: well reviewed, and this reinvigorated his passion for his profession.
Speaker 1: He realized that he really was better at educating in
Speaker 1: research than he it working with patients, so he slowly
Speaker 1: cut back on his time in practice until he was
Speaker 1: working entirely in writing and lecturing. It also took him
Speaker 1: several years to complete an entry for Encyclopedia Britannica under
Speaker 1: the heading of physiology, but when it was completed this
Speaker 1: was a significant addition to the compendium. One of the
Speaker 1: interesting things here is his assertion that mental functions like
Speaker 1: remembering and thinking are not for physiologists, but for psychologists
Speaker 1: to contemplate. Of course, we know they're interlinked and their
Speaker 1: physiological processes involved, but at the time he was like, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're just going to talk about the mechanics. Peter Roget's
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia entry that examined deafness and muteness was quite insightful
Speaker 1: actually for its time. Again still pretty outdated looking at
Speaker 1: it now, but he was one of the first to
Speaker 1: really make the case that hearing and speech issues were
Speaker 1: not indicators of any kind of lack of intelligence, which
Speaker 1: was a commonly held and of course deeply incorrect belief
Speaker 1: of the time, and he suggested that treatments with things
Speaker 1: like speech therapy, sign language learning, and education in written
Speaker 1: forms of communication could help bridge that gap. A lot
Speaker 1: of what he wrote for the Encyclopedia was crossover material
Speaker 1: that he was also working on in his own research.
Speaker 1: The two branches of his work really fed into one another.
Speaker 1: One particular area in which this happened was his writing
Speaker 1: regarding the structure of the human brain. When Rog's editor
Speaker 1: tasked him with writing an entry on cranioscopy, there were
Speaker 1: a number of new ideas in the field. This entry
Speaker 1: was needed to help people sort out all the different
Speaker 1: ideas that people were espousing. Roge's writing in this effort
Speaker 1: was unflinching in his criticism of some of his contemporaries.
Speaker 1: Johann Caspar Lavataire was a theologian who had advanced his
Speaker 1: theories that a person's appearance could offer clues to their
Speaker 1: intellect and behavioral development. And he did that in the
Speaker 1: late eighteenth century. That was not really a new idea.
Speaker 1: Throughout the eighteenth century, that was a growing theory, and
Speaker 1: his work was followed by the work of Franz Joseph Gall,
Speaker 1: who developed a system called craniology. This would eventually become
Speaker 1: known more as phrenology. For example, Gall believed that he
Speaker 1: could palpate a person's head and correctly determine that person's
Speaker 1: natural talents and skills, as well as their deficiencies. When
Speaker 1: Rogee took a close look at all of Gall's writings
Speaker 1: on craniology, he just found it fundamentally flawed, and he
Speaker 1: wrote exactly that in his Britannica article on the subject,
Speaker 1: writing quote, nothing like direct proof has been given that
Speaker 1: the presence of any particular part of the brain is
Speaker 1: essentially necessary to the carrying on of the operations of
Speaker 1: the mind. Of Gall's methodology, Roge wrote, quote, with such
Speaker 1: convenient logic and accommodating principles of philosophizing, it would be
Speaker 1: easy to prove anything. We suspect, however, that on that
Speaker 1: very account they will be reed as having proved nothing.
Speaker 1: Although Roget had been thorough in his examination of craniology,
Speaker 1: and he had explained his logic and the ways in
Speaker 1: which he had shown Gaul's method to be faulty, there
Speaker 1: was a significant backlash to the Encyclopedia entry. That backlash
Speaker 1: was even among other physicians. People who were starting to
Speaker 1: make their living as phrenologists, of course, were incensed. They
Speaker 1: said that Rogge simply could not comprehend the science involved
Speaker 1: in their work. A team of brothers, Andrew Combe, who
Speaker 1: was a doctor and George Combe, who was a lawyer,
Speaker 1: wrote that quote, the publishers of the Encyclopedia may yet
Speaker 1: find cause to regret having ever had the disadvantage of
Speaker 1: your pen about Roche. The two of them had, of
Speaker 1: course started a phrenology business, and in response to their critique,
Speaker 1: when the next edition of Encyclopedia Britannica was released, Peter
Speaker 1: Roche had updated the article. He changed the entry title
Speaker 1: from craniology to phrenology. He made clear that the validity
Speaker 1: of phrenology was on phrenologist to prove, and he included
Speaker 1: a twenty one page addendum to the article in which
Speaker 1: he refuted all of the comb Brothers' points. He had
Speaker 1: consulted numerous scientists and doctors on the matter to assure
Speaker 1: readers that he was not writing strictly from his own experience,
Speaker 1: and none of them quote afforded any evidence favorable to
Speaker 1: the doctrine. After two years of back and forth with
Speaker 1: the Combs brothers in print, Rage just stopped participating in
Speaker 1: any argument about phrenology because at that point he felt
Speaker 1: that the field was recognized as inherently flawed. Roget wrote
Speaker 1: for other publications in addition to Encyclopedia Britannica, including the
Speaker 1: Cyclopedia or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature, and
Speaker 1: later the Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine, he wrote entries on
Speaker 1: a range of medical subjects, including tetanus, asphyxia, and aging.
Speaker 1: Outside of requested or assigned topics from his editors, he
Speaker 1: continued to do his own research. Somewhere in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen teens or early eighteen twenty, Roget met Michael Faraday
Speaker 1: and Joseph Plateau, and that led him to start his
Speaker 1: own experiments in optics. He had, as we just mentioned,
Speaker 1: already written about kaleidoscopes and their possible improvements, but at
Speaker 1: this point he really started working with them to see
Speaker 1: how they could be used to elicit various responses from
Speaker 1: the human eye as a research and diagnostic tool, and
Speaker 1: he published his findings in his paper on the Voluntary
Speaker 1: Actions of the Iris in eighteen twenty. He suspected that
Speaker 1: his claim to be able to manipulate the iris might
Speaker 1: be met with questions, and he was clear that he
Speaker 1: could prove his work if challenged, writing, when I have
Speaker 1: stated that I possessed the power of dilating and contracting
Speaker 1: at pleasure the iris, the fibers of which are usually
Speaker 1: considered as no more under the dominion of the will
Speaker 1: than the heart or blood vessels, my assertion has in
Speaker 1: general excited. Much astonishment, however, is strictly the fact I
Speaker 1: can easily satisfy any person who witnesses the movements. As
Speaker 1: he was becoming really well known for his science writing,
Speaker 1: Rogee married Mary Taylor Hobson. That was on November eighteenth,
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty four, in Saint Philip's Church in Liverpool. This
Speaker 1: was truly a love match. The couple eventually had two children.
Speaker 1: A daughter named Catherine Mary, who went by Kate, was
Speaker 1: born in eighteen twenty five. They also had a son,
Speaker 1: John Lewis, born in eighteen twenty eight. Not long after
Speaker 1: he got married, Peter wrote about the optical illusion that
Speaker 1: became his most well known work in that area. It
Speaker 1: was something that he described as quote the illusion that
Speaker 1: occurs when a bright object is wheeled rapidly round in
Speaker 1: a circle, giving rise to the appearance of a line
Speaker 1: of light through the whole circumference. This became more commonly
Speaker 1: known as the spoke illusion, and it started when Roge
Speaker 1: simply noticed the wheel of a cart on the street
Speaker 1: turning through his window. He and Mary. He had only
Speaker 1: been married a few days at that point, they had
Speaker 1: skipped a honeymoon, and when he saw it he apparently
Speaker 1: said Mary, I have just noticed something truly remarkable about
Speaker 1: human vision. He saw how the spokes of the wheel
Speaker 1: looked like they were curved, even though he knew they
Speaker 1: were not, and he was instantly curious about what was
Speaker 1: happening with his vision and perception to create this illusion.
Speaker 1: The story goes that he went out to the street
Speaker 1: and flagged down a vendor with a cart and offered
Speaker 1: to pay him if he would just roll his cart
Speaker 1: back and forth for him for a while so he
Speaker 1: could study the wheels. As the cart wheels turned at
Speaker 1: his direction, Roget took detailed notes. He came to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that what was happening was that his eye was
Speaker 1: taking in the movement as frames, and what looked like
Speaker 1: the spokes of the wheel bending was really retinal after images.
Speaker 1: In eighteen twenty seven, Roget became Secretary of the Royal Society.
Speaker 1: In eighteen twenty nine, Francis Henry Edge, eighth Earl of
Speaker 1: Bridgewater died. Princess was an eccentric fellow and will almost
Speaker 1: certainly be a show topic in the future, but he's
Speaker 1: important to the life of Peter Roge because when he died,
Speaker 1: he left eight thousand pounds to the Royal Society, with
Speaker 1: the use of the money clearly spelled out. He wanted
Speaker 1: the greatest minds of the day to write essays on
Speaker 1: the theme quote the Goodness of God as manifested in
Speaker 1: the Creation, and then that would be collected into book
Speaker 1: form so that a thousand copies of it could be printed.
Speaker 1: This project became known as the Bridgewater Treatises and it
Speaker 1: went to press with eight parts, and of course Peter
Speaker 1: Roje was a contributor. Oh Bridgewater, I can't wait to
Speaker 1: do that episode. For a variety of reasons, Roget wrote
Speaker 1: a two volume title for the Treatises, which was Animal
Speaker 1: and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference to natural Theology. He
Speaker 1: took this project extremely serious, and he ended up writing
Speaker 1: more than six hundred pages for it, more than two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand words, and it was all meticulously
Speaker 1: organized and accompanied by illustrations. Roge believed at the time
Speaker 1: that this was the most important project of his life.
Speaker 1: In these pages, while explaining the most up to date
Speaker 1: information on scientific concepts, he also made the case that
Speaker 1: the order of nature and what appeared to him and
Speaker 1: many others to be something that was carefully designed was
Speaker 1: proof that there was a god. Roge's treatise was published
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty four. He had written through yet another
Speaker 1: devastating loss. In the summer of eighteen thirty two, Mary
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with cancer. As her illness progressed in the winter,
Speaker 1: Roge hired Agnes Catlow to take care of the children
Speaker 1: and their education. Agnes was also one of the illustrators
Speaker 1: for Rose's Bridgewater Treatise. Mary died on April twelfth of
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty three, and she was buried in Saint George's Church, Bloomsbury.
Speaker 1: Peter's grief was really intense. He talked about not wanting
Speaker 1: to be alive anymore. And through the loss and the grief,
Speaker 1: Agnes Catlow remained she really held the household together. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She and Kate were very very close for years and
Speaker 1: years and years. And as he had come through this
Speaker 1: darkest period of his mourning, it had been returning to
Speaker 1: writing his treatise that had really kept Roge going. The
Speaker 1: same year that it was published, he moved into a
Speaker 1: new position at the Royal Institution. He became the first
Speaker 1: to hold the role of Fullerian Professor of Physiology, just
Speaker 1: As some of Rose's prior writing had garnered criticism, so
Speaker 1: did this treatise, though this time the roles were somewhat reversed.
Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty seven, Charles Babbage wrote an unauthorized Bridgewater
Speaker 1: Treatise of his own, titled Quote ninth Bridgewater Treatise a Fragment.
Speaker 1: In those he made sharp criticism of Roge's work. While
Speaker 1: Babbage didn't discount the existence of God, he strongly objected
Speaker 1: to the idea of using science to explain the divine.
Speaker 1: Babbage's position was much more along the lines of thinking
Speaker 1: that God had created the universe, but a deity was
Speaker 1: not intervening in the ongoing development of natural law and
Speaker 1: our understanding of it in the long run. While Roge
Speaker 1: may have thought he was working on his most important writing,
Speaker 1: yet his participation in the Bridgewater Treatises didn't really get
Speaker 1: all that much attention outside of criticism. Like Babbage's. A
Speaker 1: new person was about to enter Rog's life at this point,
Speaker 1: and we're going to get into that right after we
Speaker 1: hear from the sponsors. That keep stuff you missed in
Speaker 1: history class going. In eighteen thirty seven, the family Governess
Speaker 1: Agnes Catlow left her job with the Roges to set
Speaker 1: up a school. Peter hired a woman named Margaret's Spowers
Speaker 1: to replace, and while Roget and Spowers never married, they
Speaker 1: soon began a romantic relationship and they lived as a couple,
Speaker 1: although secretly they did not publicly behave as so they
Speaker 1: were a couple. Spowers lived with Roge for the rest
Speaker 1: of her life. In the eighteen forties, Peter Roge's career
Speaker 1: took a number of hits. Marine biologist Robert Grant accused
Speaker 1: him of taking many of his ideas and claiming them
Speaker 1: as his own in the Bridgewater Treatise. In response, Roget
Speaker 1: had the Lancet print all of his correspondence with Grant
Speaker 1: from the eighteen thirties when he was working on the project.
Speaker 1: That included him telling Grant that he was using the
Speaker 1: information in the treatise and that Grant would be acknowledged
Speaker 1: in it, which he was. Now this may look like
Speaker 1: Grant had overblown things that still hurt Roge's reputation. Next,
Speaker 1: Roge was criticized by the Lancet for what they felt
Speaker 1: was him slighting another scientist by keeping his writing from
Speaker 1: being published by the Royal Stiges Society and for this
Speaker 1: the Lancet and many other scientists at the time called
Speaker 1: for his dismissal. Then Roge was part of a bigger
Speaker 1: scandal for the Royal Society in which the Society's Royal
Speaker 1: Medal for Research had been given to Thomas Snowbeck erroneously.
Speaker 1: The paper that had won had not in fact been
Speaker 1: read to the Society. That was something that was part
Speaker 1: of the rules of that metal being issued. This once
Speaker 1: again slighted another scientist, Robert Lee, who had read a
Speaker 1: paper in Midwifery that was lauded as exceptional but had
Speaker 1: not received any recognition. On November thirtieth, eighteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: Peter Roget, who was exhausted by one scandal after another,
Speaker 1: resigned as Secretary of the Royal Society. He would stay
Speaker 1: on for one more year to wrap things up. Although
Speaker 1: he definitely had done some questionable things, he never acknowledged
Speaker 1: any wrongdoing and called all of the accusations against him
Speaker 1: malignant attack hacks. He had been the Royal Society's secretary
Speaker 1: for twenty one years. Peter Roget was seventy when his
Speaker 1: retirement began, but he was still eager to share his
Speaker 1: knowledge and if you read any accounts of him, everyone
Speaker 1: who knows him comments on how he is an extraordinary
Speaker 1: good health, and so he was ready to just keep
Speaker 1: going and doing things. His entire life, from the time
Speaker 1: he was a boy, he had made lists. This had
Speaker 1: started as simply cataloging the things around him, but that
Speaker 1: habit evolved as he matured into listing things related to
Speaker 1: his studies and then his work, and all of this
Speaker 1: list making was something that had helped him make order
Speaker 1: of things in the world, and many modern historians theorize
Speaker 1: that it was the way he dealt with anxiety and depression,
Speaker 1: particularly during the many very stressful periods of his life.
Speaker 1: He had found a very practical use for one of
Speaker 1: his collections of lists. Over the years as he was writing,
Speaker 1: he had kept running lists of words, grouping like words
Speaker 1: together so that he could use them for his own reference.
Speaker 1: So he decided to revisit that list and prepare it
Speaker 1: for publication. He had assembled a preliminary version when he
Speaker 1: was in his mid twenties, but he hadn't gotten it
Speaker 1: to the point that it was suitable for printing even
Speaker 1: in his later life. This whole process took more than
Speaker 1: a decade. He had started it in his early sixties,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't until his retirement that it was ready.
Speaker 1: In the early summer of eighteen fifty two, the first
Speaker 1: version of Rog's Thesaurus of English words and phrases, classified
Speaker 1: and arranged so as to facilitate the expression of ideas
Speaker 1: and assist in literary composition, was published. And while he
Speaker 1: was preparing that first edition, Peter's daughter Kate, had been
Speaker 1: spiraling with some sort of mental illness. She bounced back
Speaker 1: for a little while, but she soon had another what's
Speaker 1: described as a depressive episode, and for a while Roget
Speaker 1: had sent her around to visit friends and family, hoping
Speaker 1: travel would help her. And then there was this idea
Speaker 1: that she should be a governess because that might help
Speaker 1: her focus on other things, but she could not get
Speaker 1: a placement anywhere. Finally, Roget set her up in her
Speaker 1: own place with a small staff, essentially kind of banishing
Speaker 1: the problem from his household. His son and the rest
Speaker 1: of the family were pretty mortified that he had done this.
Speaker 1: Kate did get better, though, and after Margaret's Powers died
Speaker 1: of breast cancer in eighteen fifty two, she moved back
Speaker 1: home with her father for good. The word thesaurus means
Speaker 1: treasure in Latin, and that was exactly what the author
Speaker 1: hoped it would be. Roge stated his intent quite clearly
Speaker 1: in the thesaurus's introduction quote, the present work is intended
Speaker 1: to supply, with respect to the English language, a desideratum
Speaker 1: hitherto unsupplied in any language, namely, a collection of the
Speaker 1: words it contains, and of the idiomatic combinations peculiar to it,
Speaker 1: arranged not in alphabetical order, as they are at a dictionary,
Speaker 1: but according to the the ideas which they express. For
Speaker 1: this purpose, the words and phrases of the language are
Speaker 1: here classed not according to their sound or their orthography,
Speaker 1: but strictly according to their signification. This is verbose gent that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Peter Roche, the introduction to that thesaurus is
Speaker 1: so long, like the preface is very long. Now. Often
Speaker 1: if you were to purchase at thesaurus today, even if
Speaker 1: it is a Roge thesaurus, it will be in what's
Speaker 1: called dictionary form, meaning that it is alphabetical. But the
Speaker 1: initial editions were, and some still are, as Rege's introduction indicated,
Speaker 1: organized by ideas. He broke them down into classes. Class
Speaker 1: one was words expressing abstract relations. The subheaders here were existence, relation, quantity, order, number, time, change,
Speaker 1: and causation. Class two is words relating to space, with
Speaker 1: the subheader's space and j general dimensions, form and motion.
Speaker 1: Class three was words related to matter, including matter in general,
Speaker 1: inorganic matter, and organic matter. Class four is where things
Speaker 1: really get intense. This is the words relating to the
Speaker 1: intellectual faculties, and this is broken down into two sections
Speaker 1: of its own. First is formation of ideas, which covers
Speaker 1: everything from operations for intellect in general all the way
Speaker 1: to creative thought, and second is communication of ideas, which
Speaker 1: includes nature of ideas, communicated, modes of communication, and means
Speaker 1: of communication. Class five is words relating to the voluntary powers,
Speaker 1: and it's broken down into two sections. Like Class four was,
Speaker 1: this time individual volition and intersocial volition, and class six
Speaker 1: is words relating to these sentient and moral powers. That's
Speaker 1: broken down by types of affections. If all this sounds
Speaker 1: kind of confusing, once you start exploring it, it starts
Speaker 1: to feel pretty intuitive. It has a certain flow to it,
Speaker 1: but for folks who never quite got that vibe. There
Speaker 1: was also an alphabetical index in the back and total
Speaker 1: there were a thousand headings. I definitely remember like having
Speaker 1: the Roges Thesaurus in this form in the public library,
Speaker 1: and like thumbing through it. Yeah, and Roget had intended
Speaker 1: for it to be easy and intuitive. Writing later in
Speaker 1: that rather long introduction I mentioned quote, it is to
Speaker 1: those who are thus painfully groping their way and struggling
Speaker 1: with the difficulties of composition, that this work professes to
Speaker 1: hold out a helping hand. The inquirer can readily select,
Speaker 1: out of the ample collection spread out before his eyes
Speaker 1: in the following pages those expressions which are best suited
Speaker 1: to his purpose, and which might not have occurred to
Speaker 1: him without such assistance. In order to make this selection,
Speaker 1: he scarcely even need engage in any critical or elaborate
Speaker 1: study of the subtle distinctions existing between synonymous terms, for
Speaker 1: if the materials set before him be sufficiently abundant and instinctive,
Speaker 1: tact will rarely fail to lead him to the proper choice.
Speaker 1: And people really liked it. One reviewer noted that you
Speaker 1: could read through the entire book because Roge had arranged
Speaker 1: things in such a way that they had a very
Speaker 1: pleasing flow. It was enjoyable to move through it. The
Speaker 1: concept was embraced really quickly, and soon there were more
Speaker 1: printings needed. Roget continued to add to his entries and
Speaker 1: to refine them, something that all of his years of
Speaker 1: writing for encyclopedias had no doubt prepared him for. In
Speaker 1: September eighteen sixty nine, Roge visited the village of West
Speaker 1: Alvern on vacation, and he died there on September twelfth,
Speaker 1: at the age of ninety. He had continued to revise
Speaker 1: his thesaurus right up to the end of his life,
Speaker 1: and when he died, his son John took over his editor.
Speaker 1: More than forty mon million copies of roges Thesaurus have
Speaker 1: been sold over the years. In nineteen twenty five, Peter
Speaker 1: Rose was deemed the Saint of Crosswordia by New York
Speaker 1: Times magazine. There are also many other things he's been called.
Speaker 1: One thing that we will talk about in our behind
Speaker 1: the scenes Okay, his life was a wild ride, so
Speaker 1: much more than I had anticipated. Yes, I was trying
Speaker 1: to go for a no bummers episode, and then I
Speaker 1: got to all of the sad parts and I say, yeah,
Speaker 1: too late, hot plate, YEP, I understand this for sure.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to send us a note, our email addresses
Speaker 1: History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe
Speaker 1: to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.