Eugène Dally (1833–1887) et les liens historiques entre la Société Médico-Psychologique et la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris

RésuméLe docteur Eugène Dally (1833–1887), physiothérapeute et vulgarisateur en France des bienfaits de la gymnastique, fut un membre actif de la Société Médico-Psychologique et de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris créée par Broca. Positiviste, intransigeant et anticlérical convaincu, il défendait des positions tranchées sur la responsabilité des criminels qui anticipent le mouvement de défense sociale, et sur la proximité de l’Homme et des singes supérieurs qui a trouvé depuis peu des preuves de sa pertinence.

The Société Médico-Psychologique (SMP) was founded in 1852, while the Société d’Anthropologie, with the later addition “de Paris” (SAP), was founded in 1859 under the auspices of Broca. Several of its members, including some of the more eminent ones, came from the SMP. These two societies remain very active to this day.ObjectivesThe objectives of these two societies and the issues, which concerned the scientific world, are researched in the work and philosophical options of Dr. Dally (1833–1887), who was an active member and president of the two societies.Materials and methodsThe work of Eugène Dally has been compiled in the collections of the Annales Médico-Psychologiques and in the Bulletins et mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris.ResultsEugène Dally followed in the footsteps of his father Nicolas Dally as both physiotherapist – propagating in France the benefits of gymnastics – and polygraph. A disciple of Littré and an intransigent defender of the positivist doctrine, he was also a convinced anticlerical and he defended his ideas within these two societies which he joined the same year, at the age of 27 years. His career in the SAP was brilliant (he held its chair in ethnology) in the footsteps of Broca, of whom he was a fervent disciple. After his translation of Man's Place in Nature by Th Huxley, which allowed him to defend Darwin's ideas, he introduced the concept of transformism to France and shifted Broca's anti-evolutionist stance. He defended the close links between Man and the higher apes more consequently than Huxley, anticipating the modern works of the primatologists (Frans de Waal). At the SAP he was also a critical adversary of the extrapolations made from dubious anomalies discovered upon examining the brains of criminals with the aim of considering them ill and thus explaining their acts. His arrival in the SMP coincided with the opening, which had been agreed (in sign of goodwill to the new conservative power) to non-medical members from the fields of philosophy, law, history and even religion. His work and his interventions were those of a polemicist battling in the clan of physiologists and materialists against the spiritualists and metaphysicians. Hence he took clear-cut, violently anticlerical positions when the issue of the soul was put on the agenda. The deadlock in the debates on such subjects most likely explains the gradual abandoning of multidisciplinarity within the SMP membership. During discussions in 1863, which brought together all the leading lights of the SMP on the issue of criminal responsibility, Dally equally supported an unequivocal position, setting hardened criminals alongside the ill. Thus he defended – in a conscious manner – a theoretical position which considered social defence only.ConclusionsEugène Dally is the most committed representative of a generation of anticlerical doctors obstinately pursuing the Voltairien combat. His positivist, scientific convictions most likely met with the approval of several members of the SMP who found in him their spokesman. He can be considered to be a forerunner of the movement for social defence and his position on the close ties between Man and the higher apes has more recently proved its relevance.