Charles Robert Richet (1850–1935) was one of the most influential French physiologists of his generation: from 1887 Professor of Physiology at the Paris Sorbonne, 1913 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of anaphylaxis – the severe allergic shock reaction whose name Richet himself coined. What is almost always missing from the popular image of science: from the 1870s onwards Richet devoted a substantial part of his life to the experimental investigation of mediumistic phenomena. He coined the terms métapsychique (the French word for parapsychology), ectoplasm, telekinesis and cryptesthesia. In 1905 he was President of the Society for Psychical Research; in 1922 his 800-page standard work Traité de Métapsychique appeared. A hundred years later it is still the most extensive systematic survey of the pre-Rhine phase of psi research.
Who was Charles Richet?
Richet was born in Paris in 1850, the son of the well-known surgeon Alfred Richet – so into an established Parisian medical family. He studied medicine in Paris, took his MD in 1869, became a Doctor of Science in 1878 and in 1887 ordinary Professor of Physiology at the medical faculty of the Sorbonne. He taught there until his emeritation in 1925.
Richet was a man of universal interests: physiologist, pacifist, author of plays and poetry, long-time editor of the Revue scientifique. As a physician he experimented early with serum therapies (preparatory work for later immunotherapy), worked on the physiology of digestion and on the mechanisms of respiration. From that line he came across the phenomenon that would bring him the Nobel Prize.
Anaphylaxis – the 1913 Nobel Prize
On an Atlantic research voyage with Prince Albert I of Monaco, in 1902 Richet discovered a phenomenon that would forever change the physiology of allergy: dogs that were repeatedly injected with very small doses of a sea anemone toxin reacted on the second contact not with diminished sensitivity (as one would have expected from "habituation") but with a dramatic, often fatal shock. Richet named this reaction anaphylaxis – "counter-protection" – in contrast to the expected prophylaxis.
The discovery was the foundation of modern allergology and immunology. In 1913 the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology "for his work on anaphylaxis". Richet's professional medical reputation was thereby on a level that made him for any discussion of paranormal topics as authoritative as William Crookes or Oliver Lodge were in the English-speaking world at the same time.
Early on: psychical research from the 1870s
Richet's interest in mediumistic and hypnotic phenomena began early. Already in 1875, as a 25-year-old medical doctoral candidate, he carried out his first systematic experiments on hypnosis and on the transmission of mental contents between subject and experimenter. In 1884 he published in the Revue Philosophique a paper La suggestion mentale et le calcul des probabilités – one of the very first attempts to evaluate telepathy experiments statistically (a method that decades later J. B. Rhine would make standard at Duke University).
In 1890 Richet became a member of the English Society for Psychical Research – one of the few Continental European voices in an otherwise predominantly British circle. In 1905 he was elected its President. He delivered his inaugural address in London in English and set out his methodological programme.
Coinages that stuck
Richet was a gifted coiner of terms. Four of his word-creations are still standard in psi research and neighbouring fields today:
- Métapsychique (from 1905, worked out 1922) – the scientific investigation of psychical phenomena that fall outside classical psychology. In German "Parapsychologie" (Max Dessoir 1889) later became more common, in French "métapsychique" remained standard until the 1940s.
- Ectoplasm (around 1894) – Richet's term for the apparent "materialisation substance" that, with certain physical mediums, emerges from mouth, ears or other body openings and produces more or less formed shapes. The term has survived well beyond the spiritualist context – everyone today knows "ectoplasm" at least from the film Ghostbusters.
- Telekinesis – the effect of mental intention on matter without physical contact. Richet did not invent the term (the Russian researcher Aleksandr Aksakov did) but he established it in international specialist usage.
- Cryptesthesia – literally "hidden perception", Richet's umbrella term for clairvoyance, telepathy and precognition. In the English-speaking world the term was later replaced by ESP (extra-sensory perception, J. B. Rhine 1934).
The Paris investigations of Eusapia Palladino
Richet was one of the most important European investigators of the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino. Already in 1894 he attended sittings with her on Île Roubaud (at his own summer house in southern France!), together with Frederic Myers and Oliver Lodge. These sittings were decisive in the SPR's invitation of Palladino to Cambridge a year later (see our pieces on Rayleigh and J. J. Thomson).
From 1905, as director of the Institut Général Psychologique in Paris, Richet organised the famous Palladino sittings – the investigation in which Pierre and Marie Curie also took part (see our Curie-Palladino portrait). Richet was the actual spiritus rector of the programme.
Marthe Béraud / "Eva C." – the controversial episode
In 1905 Richet witnessed a series of sittings at the house of the French General Noël in Algiers with the young Marthe Béraud, later known under the pseudonym Eva C.. In these sittings Béraud produced what Richet described as a "fully materialised figure" – a supposed spirit named "Bien Boa". Richet published detailed accounts with photographs that today belong to the most discussed images in the history of spiritualism.
Methodologically this case is the most difficult in Richet's work. Already shortly after the sittings, an Algerian coach-driver raised the claim that he himself had been "Bien Boa" – disguised, paid. Later critical analyses of the Eva C. photographs often showed indications of cut-out newspaper pictures and gauze. Richet, despite these findings, held to his original observation – similar to Crookes in the Florence Cook case. Both episodes are the problematic spots in the work of great pioneers; they belong to an honest account.
"Traité de Métapsychique" (1922)
In 1922 Richet's life work appeared: the nearly 800-page Traité de Métapsychique at Félix Alcan in Paris (English 1923 at Macmillan under the title Thirty Years of Psychical Research). The book is a systematic survey, organised by phenomenon classes, of almost 50 years of experimental psi research – with thousands of individual cases, methodological discussions, statistical evaluations.
Richet's concluding position in the Traité is sober and differentiated:
- Subjective metapsychique (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition – all that he called "cryptesthesia") – after 30 years of experimental findings, for him practically beyond doubt.
- Objective metapsychique (telekinesis, materialisation) – for him also real, but methodologically more difficult and more susceptible to fraud.
- Survival question – methodologically undecidable; telepathy among those present ("super-psi") is an alternative to the survival hypothesis that Richet did not wish to exclude.
This position is the same class separation that we have also observed in J. J. Thomson and Lord Rayleigh: which class of phenomena with which standard of proof, not "all or nothing".
"I have not invented metapsychique. I have only proposed a name for a field of research that already existed, and for thirty years I have tried to treat it with the methodology of physiology."
— Paraphrase of a self-characterisation by Charles Richet in the preface to the Traité de Métapsychique (1922)
The Institut Métapsychique International
On Richet's initiative and with his financial support, the French physician Gustave Geley founded in 1919 in Paris the Institut Métapsychique International (IMI). It was thereby one of the world's first privately funded research institutes specifically for psi research – institutionally comparable with the later Rhine Research Center in Durham. The IMI still exists today, although on a clearly reduced scale, and is an official institution d'utilité publique of France.
What remains
- Maximum professional medical authority. Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology 1913, 38 years Sorbonne professor, member of the Académie des sciences. Anyone wishing to dismiss Richet as "credulous" has to explain why the same person founded modern allergology.
- Coinages with staying power.Métapsychique, ectoplasm, telekinesis, cryptesthesia – Richet's word-creations are partly standard to this day, partly culturally present everywhere. Few scientists leave so many permanent terms in a marginal field.
- The Traité de Métapsychique as landmark. 800 pages, thousands of individual cases, methodologically organised by phenomenon classes – to this day it is the most detailed survey of psi research before 1930. Anyone who wants to understand the line in which Rhine began in 1930 at Duke cannot avoid the Traité.
- Honesty about the difficult cases. The Eva C. episode is the problematic spot in Richet's work, similar to the Florence Cook case in Crookes. It belongs to the overall picture – but it does not invalidate the more strictly secured findings on telepathy and cryptesthesia.
Richet belongs in the historical line we are tracing on this site: Kepler, Crookes, the Curies, Lodge, Rayleigh, J. J. Thomson, Jung, Pauli, Einstein, Rhine, PEAR, Josephson, Dürr, Wigner. Among the people of this series, he is the one who provided the vocabulary with which the others could describe the field at all.
Sources
- Charles Richet: Traité de Métapsychique. Félix Alcan, Paris 1922 (English: Thirty Years of Psychical Research, Macmillan, London/New York 1923; German: Grundriss der Parapsychologie und Parapsychophysik, Hirzel, Leipzig 1923).
- Charles Richet: Souvenirs d'un physiologiste. Peyronnet, Paris 1933 – autobiography.
- Charles Richet: L'avenir et la prémonition. Aubier, Paris 1931.
- Charles Richet: La grande espérance. Montaigne, Paris 1933 – late work on the survival question.
- Charles Richet: De quelques phénomènes dits matériels avec le médium algérien Marthe Béraud. Annales des sciences psychiques, 1905 – the original Eva C. reports.
- Carlos S. Alvarado: Charles Richet and the Origins of Parapsychology. Several papers in the Journal of Scientific Exploration and in the SPR's Psi Encyclopedia.
- Société Française d'Histoire de la Médecine / Académie nationale de médecine – biographical notes on Richet.