WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Peter Roget 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:06.520 Peter Mark Roget was born on January eighteenth, seventeen seventy nine, 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:09.440 or two hundred and forty six years ago today, so 0:00:09.560 --> 0:00:13.520 our episode on him and his thesaurus is today's Saturday Classic. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.799 We mention a couple of subjects in this episode that 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:20.760 we've covered since then. Our episode on Francis Henry Edgerton, 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:23.919 a thirle of Bridgewater, which I specifically said would be 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:27.680 covered later, came out on February twenty first, twenty twenty two. 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:31.600 And our two parter that covered Humphrey davies self experimentation 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:34.720 with nitrous oxide was a two parter that started on 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:38.720 April twenty ninth, twenty twenty four. This originally came out 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:45.519 February second, twenty twenty two. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:55.640 Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:59.440 Welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:02.520 So I think it's a safe bet that if you've 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:06.080 done any amount of writing, you have probably stumbled across 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:12.040 Rose's thesaurus. Yeah, that's I think one of my earliest 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:17.560 experiences of like, here are resources in the library. Yes, uh, 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:21.240 and Rose was a person, Peter Mark Roge. He was 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.520 a doctor and a scientist who really liked putting things 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:28.600 into classification systems. But his life was quite dramatic, well 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:31.920 before he put together the book that is his legacy, 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:34.600 and today we are going to talk all about that. 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:37.120 We want to give you a heads up that this 0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:42.199 episode contains discussion of suicide and some detailed discussion because 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:44.399 of an event that shaped Roget's life. So if you 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.240 would like to skip that, jump ahead about two to 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:49.880 three minutes to the first ad break, starting when we 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:54.040 mentioned the year eighteen eighteen. Peter Mark Roge was born 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:58.280 on January eighteenth, seventeen seventy nine, in London. His father, 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:02.760 Jean Roget, was Genevieve's pastor who had moved to England 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:06.080 as an adult. He died when Peter was just four 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:10.360 years old. His mother was Catherine Romilly, and her brother, 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:15.320 the abolitionist, legal reformer and politician, Sir Samuel Romilly, became 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:18.520 a significant figure in Peter's life. After his father died, 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:24.320 Peter referred to his uncle as his surrogate father. Peter's mother, Catherine, 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:27.680 has been characterized by a biographers as domineering. She was 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:31.480 very involved in her son's life. She likely had depression 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:35.640 and sometimes she exhibited paranoia, and she really really pushed 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:39.079 her son to be an achiever. When Peter was just fourteen, 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:42.519 his mother moved the entire family, including his sister Annette, 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:46.160 who likely also had depression, to Edinburgh, Scotland, so that 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:49.760 Peter could study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:52.800 did not only take classes intended to prepare him for 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:56.040 a career as a doctor, though he also loved and 0:02:56.120 --> 0:03:00.360 studied literature and philosophy. In seventeen ninety eight, the age 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:04.960 of nineteen, Roge graduated from medical school. Even in this 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:08.280 early stage of his life, he had this proclivity to 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:12.280 study the classification and organization of things that was really apparent. 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:17.160 His medical school thesis, which was about chemical affinities, invoked 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:20.880 the work of Carl Naeus and his classification system, as 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:23.000 well as others who had used it in their work. 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:27.480 One of Roge's first projects out of school was, unsurprisingly, 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:32.320 a system of classification. This was very, very broad in scope. 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:36.240 He wanted to sort all knowledge into three categories. The 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:39.680 first was the material world, which focused on natural history. 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:43.280 The second was the intellectual World, which included all manner 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:47.240 of philosophies, theories and belief systems. And the third was 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:50.440 the World of Signs, which was really about words and communication, 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:54.880 and he collaborated on this work with a philosopher, Dougald Stewart, 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.920 but it was never published. In seventeen ninety nine, rog 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:01.720 was published for the first time in the Journal of 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:06.480 Thomas Beddows. This is a series of notes regarding consumption 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:11.160 as it related to various professions. Roget also joined Beto's 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:15.720 research facility, the Pneumatic Medical Institution that was in Bristol, England. 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:20.800 In Bedows's group, Roge worked alongside Humphrey Davy experimenting with 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:25.120 gases and their possible medical uses. One of the things 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:28.520 that they worked on were possible pain management or sedative 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:32.480 uses for gases like nitrous oxide. They actually published a 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.040 paper about it in eighteen hundred that was more than 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:38.040 forty years before such things were ever used in dental 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:42.120 work or surgery, and in some cases the researchers were 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:46.680 also experiment subjects. Roge wrote about his own experience with 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:51.000 nitrous oxide, which for him was quite disorienting. Quote, I 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:53.520 seemed to lose the sense of my own weight and 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:57.080 imagined I was sinking into the ground. I then felt 0:04:57.080 --> 0:05:00.120 a drowsiness gradually steal over me, and a day this 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:04.440 inclination to motion, I was gradually roused from this torpor 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:08.560 by a kind of delirium. I felt myself totally incapable 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:12.000 of speaking, and for some time lost all consciousness of 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:15.719 where I was or who was near me. Roget did 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:18.400 not stay with the Bedos Institute for very long. He 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:21.520 left Bristol in eighteen hundred and moved east to London. 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:24.680 There he continued his medical studies by working with a 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.720 number of prominent physicians of the day. What of those 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:31.800 was Edward Jenner. Yeah. His connections throughout his life kind 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:36.000 of read like the checklist of important scientists and doctors 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.680 of the period. Peter Roget also made money during this 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:42.919 time as a private tutor. He was hired to educate 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:46.880 two boys, Burton and Nathaniel Phillips, and also to travel 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:50.560 with them on a year long trip around Europe. Roge 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.239 was twenty three when they started their trip, heading first 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:57.440 to Paris, where things started out quite well. They visited museums, 0:05:57.520 --> 0:05:59.799 they walked the city, and they took in the culture 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:03.640 and although Roget was not exactly in love with French life. 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:06.800 He wrote some very disparaging things about the French people. 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:10.719 He was happy to be making money and traveling, and 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:13.039 when they moved on to Geneva he found that to 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:17.600 be quite enjoyable. But then they got trapped there. On 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:21.039 May eighteenth, eighteen oh three, Britain declared war on France, 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:25.560 and Napoleon Bonaparte declared that all adult British citizens and 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:29.680 French territories were prisoners of war. That means Roget was 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:32.080 part of that group. Much to his shock and surprise. 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:36.560 His charges, though, were not affected. They were under eighteen, 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:38.839 and he didn't just want to send them off on 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.000 their own, hoping they would make it home safely. They 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:45.080 tried to petition the French government for an exemption because 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:48.480 of their situation, but when that failed, he started reaching 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:51.719 out to their father's business contacts in Switzerland to try 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:54.680 to find these boys a safe haven. He moved the 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:58.839 boys first to Lausanne and then to Nuqtel. Then he 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:03.360 did something ingenius. So if you'll remember we mentioned at 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.120 the top of this episode that his father, Jean Roget, 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:11.320 was from Geneva, Peter did an impressive bit of bureaucratic dancing, 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:13.760 and in less than twenty four hours he managed to 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:17.400 track down his deceased father's birth certificate and a government 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:21.280 official to provide certification that Peter was Jean's son and 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:26.360 thus eligible for Genevieve's citizenship. This whole business had, according 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:30.480 to Roge, required a bribe. This let him get a 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:34.000 limited passport to rejoin the Phillips brothers, but then to 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:36.800 get home they had to sneak through small towns, never 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:40.200 speaking English in front of anybody, making some more bribes 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.920 along the way. Eventually they got to unoccupied Germany and 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:47.120 from there they were able to get passage home. Roge 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:50.080 later wrote of this ordeal quote, it is impossible to 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:53.520 describe the rapture we felt in treading on friendly ground. 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:56.960 It was like awaking from a horrid dream, or recovering 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.000 from a nightmare. Back in England, in eighteen o five, 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:03.040 Roge moved to Manchester and took a job at the 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:06.880 public Infirmary. In addition to his work as a public 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:10.480 health physician, he also put together a lecture series there 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:14.840 several in fact, the first was eighteen lecturers grouped together 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.720 as an offering of the College of Arts and Sciences, 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:21.040 and in these classes he returned, as ever to his 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:25.600 love of classification to form the curriculum. Physiology was broken 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:30.720 down into four units of classification covering the human respiratory, nervous, 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:35.800 mechanical and reproductive functions. He also taught animal physiology, although 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:39.559 that was separated out into a different course of fifteen lectures. 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:43.760 Because of his efforts and assembling those educational courses, he's 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:48.480 credited with starting Manchester's first medical school, but Manchester didn't 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.480 keep Roge for long either. In eighteen oh eight he 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:54.400 moved once again to London. He set up a private 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:58.600 practice but also continued teaching. This time it was at 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.920 the Russell Institution, and he built on the lecture plans 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:05.240 he had worked on in Manchester. In eighteen oh nine 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:08.560 he finally gained his Royal College of Physicians license, and 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.559 at that point he joined the Medical and Triururgical Society. 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:15.480 In eighteen eleven he became the Society's secretary, and in 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:19.679 that role he headed up to society's periodical transactions. In 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:22.280 eighteen twelve he published his own paper in it, which 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:26.480 was about the detection of arsenic in poisoning cases. That 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:30.040 same year he also became the professor of Comparative anatomy 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:33.960 at the Royal Institution. Throughout his time as a lecturer there, 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:38.040 establishing a framework of classification for any subject was always 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:41.600 imparted in his lectures. One of the major concepts he 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:44.319 was working on through all of his practice and teaching 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:48.480 was the idea that the brain itself was subconsciously classifying 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:51.559 things just as part of a person's perception of the world, 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:54.360 and he referred to the brain as quote an organ 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:59.640 of association. He innovated outside of physiology inventing a device 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:02.760 in a eighteen fourteen that he called a log log scale. 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:06.400 This it was a spiral slide rule that could add 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:10.240 the logarithms of logarithms. The paper on this was published 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:13.720 in eighteen fifteen and it contributed to Roget becoming a 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:17.760 Fellow of the Royal Society of London. Eighteen fifteen also 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:20.559 marked the beginning of a new job that was decidedly 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:25.000 in Peter Rose's lane. He started working with Encyclopedia Britannica, 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:29.040 and his writing there included biographies of various scientists and 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:32.079 thinkers of the day, as well as articles about medical 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:35.679 science itself, and this writing truthfully is a little bit 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:37.480 of a mixed bag if you look at it now. 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:40.520 It was all pretty advanced for the early nineteenth century, 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:43.920 but today, obviously a lot of it is outdated or 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:47.240 just flat out wrong. He wrote a significant article on 0:10:47.280 --> 0:10:50.800 the kaleidoscope, which expanded available knowledge of optics in the 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:53.840 workings of the human eye, and he produced a lengthy 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:57.920 article on physiology, and in that physiology writing he continued 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:00.880 to espouse his approach to categorize the workings of the 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:04.440 human body. This was where an area that roget had 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:08.040 been interested in really came to the forefront. That was 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:12.160 the nervous system. At this time, knowledge of the nervous 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:15.520 system and exactly how it functioned were still pretty primitive. 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:19.120 That was something Roge acknowledged in his writing, But he 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:22.400 did note, as others before him had, that the nervous 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:25.880 system quote bears a greater resemblance to the transmission of 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:30.200 the electric agency along conducting wires than to any other 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:34.079 fact we are acquainted with in nature. In eighteen eighteen, 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:38.880 Rogee's family went through a horrible series of tragedies. It 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:41.240 began with his aunt Anne, that was the wife of 0:11:41.280 --> 0:11:45.080 Sir Samuel Romilly, dying of cancer on October twenty ninth 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:49.160 of that year. Peter had been her doctor. Samuel had 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:51.360 been at her bedside for weeks in the end, for 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:55.040 going sleep and food, and once she died, his own 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:58.320 physical and mental health quickly declined from the neglect and 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:02.160 the stress of the situation. On November two, Sir Romilly 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:05.959 asked his daughter Sophia to go get Peter roget. Peter 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:09.520 was also his doctor, so this wasn't a surprising request 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:14.720 for somebody who was obviously ill, But when Rosee arrived, 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:18.480 it became apparent immediately that this errand had been a ruse. 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:22.400 Romilly had wanted privacy because he intended to end his life. 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:26.080 Once Sophia had left, he had cut his own throat, 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:31.640 and Peter arrived just afterward. Rose tried to treat his uncle, 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:35.520 but after scribbling down the cryptic words quote my dear 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:39.120 I wish on a piece of paper, Romily died in 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:44.560 his arms. After that, Peter's mother, Catherine, also fell into 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.200 her own deep depression. She became very, very paranoid. She 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:51.200 was certain that the house staff was working toward her demise, 0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:55.520 and she progressively became kind of closed off from everyone. 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:59.679 She alternated between paranoid episodes in near catatonia for the 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:03.319 remains of her life. Coming up, we'll talk about how 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:06.880 Peter Roget's work at the lectern was what helped get 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:09.360 him through all of this. First, though, we'll take a 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:22.760 quick sponsor break. Unsurprisingly, given what he had just been through, 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.360 Peter took several months off of work after his uncle's death, 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:29.520 and he also wrote to a friend that his confidence 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:32.120 was deeply shaken. He wasn't even sure he should be 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.240 a doctor anymore. But he also knew that he couldn't 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:38.720 easily switch professions at that point in his life, and 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.640 so he restarted his career sort of by going back 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:44.920 to lecturing at the Royal Institution. He described it as 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:47.440 like starting at the bottom of the ladder and just rebuilding. 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:50.960 But his lectures there were very well received and very 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:55.280 well reviewed, and this reinvigorated his passion for his profession. 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:59.040 He realized that he really was better at educating in 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:02.680 research than he it working with patients, so he slowly 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:05.440 cut back on his time in practice until he was 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:09.719 working entirely in writing and lecturing. It also took him 0:14:09.760 --> 0:14:13.640 several years to complete an entry for Encyclopedia Britannica under 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:16.880 the heading of physiology, but when it was completed this 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:20.480 was a significant addition to the compendium. One of the 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:24.080 interesting things here is his assertion that mental functions like 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:29.280 remembering and thinking are not for physiologists, but for psychologists 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:33.920 to contemplate. Of course, we know they're interlinked and their 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:38.160 physiological processes involved, but at the time he was like, no, no, 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:41.600 we're just going to talk about the mechanics. Peter Roget's 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:46.280 Encyclopedia entry that examined deafness and muteness was quite insightful 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.920 actually for its time. Again still pretty outdated looking at 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:51.760 it now, but he was one of the first to 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:54.600 really make the case that hearing and speech issues were 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:57.960 not indicators of any kind of lack of intelligence, which 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:00.920 was a commonly held and of course deeply incorrect belief 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:04.160 of the time, and he suggested that treatments with things 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:07.880 like speech therapy, sign language learning, and education in written 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:11.840 forms of communication could help bridge that gap. A lot 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:15.520 of what he wrote for the Encyclopedia was crossover material 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:18.120 that he was also working on in his own research. 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:21.040 The two branches of his work really fed into one another. 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:24.760 One particular area in which this happened was his writing 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:28.840 regarding the structure of the human brain. When Rog's editor 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:32.320 tasked him with writing an entry on cranioscopy, there were 0:15:32.360 --> 0:15:35.400 a number of new ideas in the field. This entry 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:37.920 was needed to help people sort out all the different 0:15:37.960 --> 0:15:42.760 ideas that people were espousing. Roge's writing in this effort 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:46.480 was unflinching in his criticism of some of his contemporaries. 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:51.320 Johann Caspar Lavataire was a theologian who had advanced his 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:55.040 theories that a person's appearance could offer clues to their 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:57.640 intellect and behavioral development. And he did that in the 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:01.040 late eighteenth century. That was not really a new idea. 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.280 Throughout the eighteenth century, that was a growing theory, and 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:08.360 his work was followed by the work of Franz Joseph Gall, 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:12.840 who developed a system called craniology. This would eventually become 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:16.960 known more as phrenology. For example, Gall believed that he 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:20.960 could palpate a person's head and correctly determine that person's 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:25.440 natural talents and skills, as well as their deficiencies. When 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:27.960 Rogee took a close look at all of Gall's writings 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:31.400 on craniology, he just found it fundamentally flawed, and he 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:35.080 wrote exactly that in his Britannica article on the subject, 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:38.800 writing quote, nothing like direct proof has been given that 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:41.400 the presence of any particular part of the brain is 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:45.040 essentially necessary to the carrying on of the operations of 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:49.760 the mind. Of Gall's methodology, Roge wrote, quote, with such 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:54.400 convenient logic and accommodating principles of philosophizing, it would be 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:58.240 easy to prove anything. We suspect, however, that on that 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:01.960 very account they will be reed as having proved nothing. 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:07.200 Although Roget had been thorough in his examination of craniology, 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:10.040 and he had explained his logic and the ways in 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:12.840 which he had shown Gaul's method to be faulty, there 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:17.320 was a significant backlash to the Encyclopedia entry. That backlash 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:21.199 was even among other physicians. People who were starting to 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:25.080 make their living as phrenologists, of course, were incensed. They 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:28.160 said that Rogge simply could not comprehend the science involved 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:31.560 in their work. A team of brothers, Andrew Combe, who 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:34.240 was a doctor and George Combe, who was a lawyer, 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:37.960 wrote that quote, the publishers of the Encyclopedia may yet 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:41.479 find cause to regret having ever had the disadvantage of 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:45.119 your pen about Roche. The two of them had, of 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:49.600 course started a phrenology business, and in response to their critique, 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:53.800 when the next edition of Encyclopedia Britannica was released, Peter 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.679 Roche had updated the article. He changed the entry title 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:01.520 from craniology to phrenology. He made clear that the validity 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:05.760 of phrenology was on phrenologist to prove, and he included 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:08.440 a twenty one page addendum to the article in which 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:11.960 he refuted all of the comb Brothers' points. He had 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:15.560 consulted numerous scientists and doctors on the matter to assure 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:18.639 readers that he was not writing strictly from his own experience, 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:22.480 and none of them quote afforded any evidence favorable to 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:26.080 the doctrine. After two years of back and forth with 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:29.520 the Combs brothers in print, Rage just stopped participating in 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:33.040 any argument about phrenology because at that point he felt 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:37.320 that the field was recognized as inherently flawed. Roget wrote 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:41.919 for other publications in addition to Encyclopedia Britannica, including the 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:46.960 Cyclopedia or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature, and 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:51.639 later the Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine, he wrote entries on 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:55.520 a range of medical subjects, including tetanus, asphyxia, and aging. 0:18:56.200 --> 0:19:00.280 Outside of requested or assigned topics from his editors, he 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:04.040 continued to do his own research. Somewhere in the late 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.960 eighteen teens or early eighteen twenty, Roget met Michael Faraday 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:10.679 and Joseph Plateau, and that led him to start his 0:19:10.760 --> 0:19:15.040 own experiments in optics. He had, as we just mentioned, 0:19:15.040 --> 0:19:18.600 already written about kaleidoscopes and their possible improvements, but at 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:21.520 this point he really started working with them to see 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:24.440 how they could be used to elicit various responses from 0:19:24.440 --> 0:19:27.960 the human eye as a research and diagnostic tool, and 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:31.280 he published his findings in his paper on the Voluntary 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:35.439 Actions of the Iris in eighteen twenty. He suspected that 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:38.280 his claim to be able to manipulate the iris might 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:40.639 be met with questions, and he was clear that he 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:44.040 could prove his work if challenged, writing, when I have 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:47.520 stated that I possessed the power of dilating and contracting 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:50.880 at pleasure the iris, the fibers of which are usually 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:53.400 considered as no more under the dominion of the will 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.720 than the heart or blood vessels, my assertion has in 0:19:56.800 --> 0:20:02.399 general excited. Much astonishment, however, is strictly the fact I 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:07.480 can easily satisfy any person who witnesses the movements. As 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:10.359 he was becoming really well known for his science writing, 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:14.320 Rogee married Mary Taylor Hobson. That was on November eighteenth, 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:18.320 eighteen twenty four, in Saint Philip's Church in Liverpool. This 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:22.320 was truly a love match. The couple eventually had two children. 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:25.639 A daughter named Catherine Mary, who went by Kate, was 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:28.920 born in eighteen twenty five. They also had a son, 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:32.840 John Lewis, born in eighteen twenty eight. Not long after 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:35.760 he got married, Peter wrote about the optical illusion that 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:38.359 became his most well known work in that area. It 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:41.280 was something that he described as quote the illusion that 0:20:41.320 --> 0:20:44.399 occurs when a bright object is wheeled rapidly round in 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:47.320 a circle, giving rise to the appearance of a line 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:51.120 of light through the whole circumference. This became more commonly 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:54.439 known as the spoke illusion, and it started when Roge 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:56.960 simply noticed the wheel of a cart on the street 0:20:57.359 --> 0:21:00.439 turning through his window. He and Mary. He had only 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:02.359 been married a few days at that point, they had 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:05.480 skipped a honeymoon, and when he saw it he apparently 0:21:05.520 --> 0:21:09.160 said Mary, I have just noticed something truly remarkable about 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:12.679 human vision. He saw how the spokes of the wheel 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:15.800 looked like they were curved, even though he knew they 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:18.760 were not, and he was instantly curious about what was 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:22.280 happening with his vision and perception to create this illusion. 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:25.280 The story goes that he went out to the street 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:28.399 and flagged down a vendor with a cart and offered 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:30.720 to pay him if he would just roll his cart 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:32.760 back and forth for him for a while so he 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:37.000 could study the wheels. As the cart wheels turned at 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:40.919 his direction, Roget took detailed notes. He came to the 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:44.280 conclusion that what was happening was that his eye was 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:47.639 taking in the movement as frames, and what looked like 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:51.360 the spokes of the wheel bending was really retinal after images. 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:56.879 In eighteen twenty seven, Roget became Secretary of the Royal Society. 0:21:57.640 --> 0:22:01.119 In eighteen twenty nine, Francis Henry Edge, eighth Earl of 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:06.240 Bridgewater died. Princess was an eccentric fellow and will almost 0:22:06.280 --> 0:22:08.600 certainly be a show topic in the future, but he's 0:22:08.640 --> 0:22:11.879 important to the life of Peter Roge because when he died, 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:15.480 he left eight thousand pounds to the Royal Society, with 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:19.040 the use of the money clearly spelled out. He wanted 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:22.040 the greatest minds of the day to write essays on 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:26.439 the theme quote the Goodness of God as manifested in 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.680 the Creation, and then that would be collected into book 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:32.600 form so that a thousand copies of it could be printed. 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:36.800 This project became known as the Bridgewater Treatises and it 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:40.200 went to press with eight parts, and of course Peter 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:44.520 Roje was a contributor. Oh Bridgewater, I can't wait to 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:49.280 do that episode. For a variety of reasons, Roget wrote 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:53.240 a two volume title for the Treatises, which was Animal 0:22:53.280 --> 0:22:58.040 and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference to natural Theology. He 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:01.639 took this project extremely serious, and he ended up writing 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:04.239 more than six hundred pages for it, more than two 0:23:04.320 --> 0:23:08.119 hundred and fifty thousand words, and it was all meticulously 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:12.800 organized and accompanied by illustrations. Roge believed at the time 0:23:12.840 --> 0:23:16.879 that this was the most important project of his life. 0:23:16.920 --> 0:23:19.880 In these pages, while explaining the most up to date 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:23.520 information on scientific concepts, he also made the case that 0:23:23.560 --> 0:23:26.040 the order of nature and what appeared to him and 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:29.480 many others to be something that was carefully designed was 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:33.360 proof that there was a god. Roge's treatise was published 0:23:33.359 --> 0:23:37.000 in eighteen thirty four. He had written through yet another 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:40.919 devastating loss. In the summer of eighteen thirty two, Mary 0:23:41.040 --> 0:23:44.879 was diagnosed with cancer. As her illness progressed in the winter, 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:48.480 Roge hired Agnes Catlow to take care of the children 0:23:48.520 --> 0:23:52.440 and their education. Agnes was also one of the illustrators 0:23:52.480 --> 0:23:56.439 for Rose's Bridgewater Treatise. Mary died on April twelfth of 0:23:56.480 --> 0:24:01.440 eighteen thirty three, and she was buried in Saint George's Church, Bloomsbury. 0:24:01.600 --> 0:24:04.919 Peter's grief was really intense. He talked about not wanting 0:24:04.960 --> 0:24:07.919 to be alive anymore. And through the loss and the grief, 0:24:08.000 --> 0:24:12.680 Agnes Catlow remained she really held the household together. Yeah. 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:15.840 She and Kate were very very close for years and 0:24:15.880 --> 0:24:18.720 years and years. And as he had come through this 0:24:18.880 --> 0:24:22.359 darkest period of his mourning, it had been returning to 0:24:22.400 --> 0:24:25.800 writing his treatise that had really kept Roge going. The 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:28.359 same year that it was published, he moved into a 0:24:28.400 --> 0:24:31.439 new position at the Royal Institution. He became the first 0:24:31.760 --> 0:24:36.000 to hold the role of Fullerian Professor of Physiology, just 0:24:36.040 --> 0:24:40.080 As some of Rose's prior writing had garnered criticism, so 0:24:40.240 --> 0:24:44.280