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| The Chevalier John Taylor, oculist extraordinaire... |
This blog
began with a celebration of codes in music. My Darwinian string quartet,
performed at Darwin College Cambridge last October, celebrates codes underlying
music and life itself. The faith that Darwin had in an underlying mechanism for
heredity was vindicated by the discovery of DNA 100 years later. Darwin took head
on ‘Difficulties on the Theory’ by choosing the Eye as the supreme Test Case,
the equivalent of Paley’s Watch, and it seemed a good fit to choose his words
as inspiration for the melodies:
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| "and may we not suppose that a perfect instrument might thus be formed, as superior to one of glass as the works of the Creator are to those of Man?" C. Darwin |
The question
posed, the answer was represented by a musical rendition of the genetic code
for the critical photoreceptor protein rhodopsin, the progenitor of all vision.
This coded answer was meant to be an analogy to the greatest musical-coder of
them all J.S. Bach, who also embodied the high water mark of faith-expressed-in-music
with his religious works, signing all of them S.D.G. = soli deo gloria (only for
the glory of God), as did his exact contemporary and pretty-much equal Georg
Friedrich Händel, eg in his Te Deum. I plundered Bach’s most famous musical
code B-A-C-H to set against the genetic melody.
There’s a
very strange tale-within-a-tale of a different, and sadder, connection between both
J.S. Bach and G.F. Händel with that marvelous ‘Organ of Extreme Perfection’ of
the Creator – or Evolution – The Eye. Whereas Beethoven had the misfortune to go
profoundly deaf, with no hope of a cure, both Bach and Händel were diagnosed as
suffering from cataracts. And there was something that could be done, and they
were rich enough (and desperate enough) to try.
However wince-making
it appears to us, this was back in the day of the tooth-puller, barber-surgeon,
and ‘bite-on-this’ quickie amputations on the battlefield. It’s said that
Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, whilst in labour bearing Marie-Antoinette,
had all her teeth pulled out to take her mind off her labour-pains, and
vice-versa. Anaesthesia? Well, opium was available…
It being the
Enlightenment they’d realised that the lens of the eye was fulfilling the same
function as ‘one made of glass’ – see my setting of these words of Darwin’s in the
choral piece which was the progenitor of the Eyenigma quartet.
A lens clouded
by cataract could therefore be replaced (couldn’t it?) by very thick pebble spectacles,
if the original were out of the way. This was called ‘couching’ (= laying) and
entrepreneurial surgeons saw that there was a market for this, as long as the
potential customers only heard the positive sales pitch and that one was miles
away by the time the results were in. Enter the Chevalier John Taylor. The story
is splendidly told by Jorge Álvarez including Taylor’s own eye troubles The Oculist who blinded Bach. Quite
a read!
Bach and Händel,
twin giants of the Baroque, composers of the mighty works of faith in the John
& Matthew Passions and the Messiah, having to put their faith in a chancer
(maybe that rather than a pure charlatan) like Taylor. A bad outcome for them
both but nothing happens without a bit of faith, in medicine and science as
well as religion.
Bach died on
28th July 1750, aged 65. R.I.P. (requiescat in pace).
Picture credits: Wikimedia Commons (John Taylor); David F. Gahan (copyright)
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