“We owe respect to the living. To the dead, we owe only the truth.” The forensic doctor and anthropologist Philippe Charlier endorses Voltaire’s famous quote. After Napoleon, Marat and Robespierre, this new issue of the “Scalpel History” collection attempts to shed light on the death of the famous Enlightenment philosopher, whose post-mortem wanderings are almost as romantic as his life. His death on May 30, 1778 gave rise to a dispersion of his remains transformed into secular relics.
For fear that religious institutions would prohibit a Christian burial for the man who had continued to challenge their authority, his body was transported to the abbey of Sellières, near Troyes, where his nephew, Father Mignot, organized a discreet funeral. His remains were repatriated with great fanfare by the revolutionaries, thirteen years later, to be buried in the Pantheon in a tomb, moved according to regime changes.
A great hypochondriac died at… 83 years old
This body is, however, incomplete: certain organs had been removed just after the death by his friend the Marquis de la Villette, with the help of an apothecary who displayed the philosopher’s cerebellum for a long time on the shelves of his pharmacy!
Skillfully playing on the codes of the thriller, Philippe Charlier closely examines the embalmed heart of Voltaire, now kept at the BNF. Taking advantage of an orifice in the lead envelope, he submits the precious relic to the expertise of three noses, a perfumer and two oenologists, who detect an odor of prunes. Could the organ have been preserved in brandy? Can microsamples, entrusted to researchers at the Atomic Energy Center, elucidate the causes of death? Between legends and scientific analyses, the investigation moves from the anecdotal to the serious, revealing the private life of a great hypochondriac who died at the age of 83!
