Abstract

Nicolas Malebranche was born in Paris on August 6, 1638, and died there on October 13, 1715. According to Fontenelle he was a tenth, according to André a thirteenth child, and his “machine” was persistently refractory. He was tall—about six feet—but something misshapen from rickets or some other such cause. His spine, according to the unprofessional P. Adry, was “tortueuse dans toute sa longueur,” his clavicles too large, while his arms “n'étaient point attachés à l'ordinaire.” Besides he had “all the maladies known in his time,” including severe acidity of the stomach from the age of twenty-five onwards . Nevertheless, he used to chew tobacco and was one of the earliest Parisians to become a coffee-drinker. For the most part, however, he tried to “manage his machine” by drinking water copiously. His portraits show him to have been strange, gaunt, intense, high-browed, and small-chinned