To Benjamin Franklin from Antoine-Alexis-François Cadet de Vaux, 19 October 1783
From Antoine-Alexis-François Cadet de Vaux
ALS: American Philosophical Society
ce 19 8bre. 1783
Monsieur
M. le lieutenant Général de Police fera mercredi 22 l’Installation du traitement Electrique, au couvent des célestins, près l’arsenal.4 Je l’ai flatté du plaisir de S’y rencontrer avec vous, et ce magistrat Jouira de la double Satisfaction de réunir la cause et les effets c’est a dire l’auteur immortel de la découverte de l’Electricité et les Infortunés qui lui doivent le bonheur de leur Existence.5
En conséquence Permettés, monsieur, que Je vous propose le rendès vous pour mercredi 22 à 11 heures très précises aux celestins près l’arsenal. Le magistrat S’y rendra à cette heure là et il est communement fort èxact. De là nous irons à la halle au blé. Les architectes Sont prévenus et placeront le model et les dessins;6 de là nous reviendrons diner chès moi, et Si M. de Montgolfier à qui J’en Ecris peut disposer Sa machine,7 nous irons apres midi.
Je Suis avec un profond respect Monsieur Votre très humble et très obéissant Serviteur
Cadet de Vaux
Rue des Gravilliers No 16
4. Lenoir had just arranged for Nicolas-Philippe Ledru, known popularly as “Comus” (XX, 519–20), and one of his sons to open a government-sponsored clinic for electroshock therapy in the hospital of the former couvent des Célestins. In 1782 Ledru had asked the Faculté de médecine to examine his method of using electricity to treat epilepsy and other nervous disorders. They did so, encouraged by the duc d’Orléans, Vergennes, and Lenoir, and the report they published in June, 1783 (summarized at length in the Jour. de Paris), was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Ledru was made a member of the Faculté with the title physicien du roi, and Lenoir provided him with a house where he could treat patients free of charge once they obtained the proper permissions. This experiment was deemed such a success that Lenoir arranged for Ledru to move to the couvent des Célestins in the fall: Nouvelle biographie; Geoffrey Sutton, “Electric Medicine and Mesmerism,” Isis, LXXII (1981), 375–6, 380–1, 387–90; Jour. de Paris, June 8, 23, and 25; Nov. 28, 1783. By the following spring, however, when Ledru’s results proved disappointing, the Faculté fought to regain control of the hospital: Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, XXV, 219 (entry of April 9, 1784).
5. BF did attend this installation and demonstration, and was acknowledged for both his discovery of electricity and his early applications of it for medical purposes: Jour. de Paris, Nov. 28, 1783; Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, XXIV, 48–9.
6. Architects Jacques-Guillaume Legrand and Jacques Molinos had only the previous month completed work on the dome, the largest in France, covering the municipal grain market, the Halle au Blé. Based on a carpentry technique invented in the sixteenth century, the dome consisted entirely of wooden beams and 25 large glass panels. The combination of the dome’s size and its airiness and transparency fascinated contemporaries, including BF, who reportedly offered to install a lightning rod on its iron lantern. His concern about the dome’s inflammability was well founded. In 1802 an accidental fire completely destroyed the edifice: Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, XXIII, 277–8; Mark K. Deming, La Halle au Blé de Paris, 1762–1813: “Cheval de Troie” de l’abondance dans la capitale des Lumières (Brussels, 1984), pp. 175–88.
7. Etienne Montgolfier staged a series of manned balloon experiments—on Oct. 15, 17, and 19—at Réveillon’s paper factory: see Le Roy to BF, [Oct. 19?].