Godefroy Calès

Jean Marie Noël Godefroy Calès was a French physician and politician. He was born on 21 March 1799 in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) and died on 25 July 1868 in Villefranche-de-Lauragais (Haute-Garonne).

Biography
Godefroy Calès was born on 21 March 1799 in Saint-Denis in a family from southwestern France with a republican tradition. His father, Jean Calès (born in Caraman on 8 November 1764, deceased in Mazamet on 11 October 1840 and married to Marianne Louise Victorine Fournier, deceased on 9 February 1744 in Villefranche-de-Lauragais), was a physician and the administrator of the region Haute-Garonne between 1793 and 1794. He was later appointed, in 1799, chief physician of the military hospital of Saint-Denis, then called hôpital militaire de Franciade and located after the revolution within the walls of the Abbey Church of St Denis, where his son Godefroy was born. He then filled, from 1800 to 1804, the functions of Inspector-General of Military Hospitals. Jean Calès was the brother of Jean-Marie Calès (1757–1834), the eldest, also physician and representative at the National Convention and at the Council of Five-Hundred, and of Jean-Chrysostôme Calès (1769–1853), colonel in Napoleon's Great Army, baron of the Empire and representative at the Chamber of Representatives. Their parents (Godefroy's grandparents), Jean Calès, who was an alderman of Caraman, and Jeanne Rochas, were landowners of the region of Lauragais near Toulouse, from old Protestant families rooted in the region and forced to convert to Catholicism after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes issued by king Louis XIV in 1685.

The younger brother of Godefroy, Louis Denis Godefroy, (born in November 1800 in Etain, Meuse), medical student in Toulouse in 1821, then professor at Castres, was presented to the Faculty of Protestant Theology of Montauban (created in 1808 by Napoleon I) and the Protestant consistory named him, on 20 April 1832, pastor in Viane (Tarn) where he will officiate until June 1874. Faithful to family's traditions, Godefroy Calès followed, in Montpellier, the courses at the Faculty of Medicine and was received doctor in 1822. Established in Villefranche-de-Lauragais, where he had early acquired a certain political influence in republican circles, he was named after the Revolution of 1830 Commander of the National Guard; but seeing that the government was embarking on a course which was not his, he resigned. Godefroy remained close, intellectually and politically, to his uncle Jean-Marie, and this, despite the fact that the royalists condemned him to exile and banished him from the national territory in 1816, as a regicide, during the restoration of Monarchy. A letter written from Liège in 1833 by the former conventional and deputy to the Council of the Five-Hundred, and addressed to his nephew Godefroy, explicitly testifies about the proximity of their common republican convictions. The extract from the following letter (sent from Liège on 21 October 1833 addressed by Jean-Marie Calès to his nephew, Godefroy) gives an interesting piece of information about the life he lived in Liège. One can see that the former member of the Convention had not, like so many of his colleagues, repudiated his democratic principles. ''« To Monsieur Calès, doctor of medicine, in Villefranche-de-Lauragais, through Toulouse, France. My dear friend. Your letter, full of wit and sparkling with gaiety, gives me the greatest pleasure; you remind me of the mischievousnesses of my youth, of which I do not repent; they made me laugh before, why should they make me cry now? I shall never forget that they made me bear without difficulty the misery, which continually heaped on me, that they have softened the bitterness which the exercise of medicine entails with it, a divine art in itself, yet detestable for him who exercises it. The uneducated public, the ignorant confreres, jealous and envious, give a thousand disgusts to the educated practitioner; I know that we can gain by it over all of that; but we feel some anguish, which we bear with difficulty. You tell me that a nobleman has vexed you because you were my parents: that does not astonish me from him; it is a caste so low, so ill-educated, that one can expect of it only the fruits of ignorance and prejudice. I am sure that the idiot who vexed you, if he lost his place, is as flat today as he was arrogant then. I have seen nobles of another flock, such as the Bethune-Sully, the Lagrange, the Nivernais, the Rohan, honoring themselves to be as sentinels at my door, and lavishing upon me the testimonies of the most adulatory sentiments, down to baseness. I’m citing this to prove you that these nobles have no nobility and, as long as this caste will exist, it will be the misfortune of France. I do not wish it to be annihilated, but I would have it put into the inability to harm. Here is my position in Liège. After living in Munich and Basel, in Switzerland, I came to Liège fifteen years ago. The police commissioner Wassin confused me with my brother Chrysostôme [ Jean-Chrysostôme Calès, A.N.], with whom he had served, and proposed me to remain at Liège. The plan of the Bourbons was to push us until Siberia, and a safe asylum was, then, a treasure. I found it here. I first occupied myself to make theses for the candidates in medicine, which produced me twelve hundred francs a year. Soon after, a few cures, which made a certain noise, attracted to me a prodigious number of patients, but because I was not a Belgian doctor, I decided to give consultations at my house and I refused to go to see the patients, excepted only if I would be called in consultation by doctors, what happens sometimes. There are no important people who had not come to me yet, and the public has followed their example, which has given me some consideration. As I helped and pleased a lot of people, everyone tries to help me. Everything I do is free; a sober life puts me above any need and with a small income I look like a rich man. Embrace for me my sisters. The eldest [Marie-Étiennette Pujol, born Calès, A.N.] first had the courage to write to me before the end of my exile. I am grateful to her. Justine [Marie-Justine Pujol, born Calès, A.N.], whom I left as a child, always had my friendship. I thank you for giving me news of her. [...] All yours. Calès. A thousand greetings to your wife [Léonie-Alphonsine-Zulmée Calès, born Metgé, A.N.], of which you do not speak and to your little boy'' [ Jean-Jules-Godefroy Calès, born in 1828, then 5 years-old in 1833. A.N.]''. » (in « La Révolution Française », Historical review directed by Auguste Dide, Tome X, January–June 1886, Paris, Charavray frères, editors. Available (in French'') on the site of Archive.org, p740-743: https://archive.org/details/larvolutionfra10sociuoft Still remaining a member of the Municipal Council of Villefranche until 1848, Godefroy proclaimed that year, during the French second revolution, the Republic, and took over the administration of the city.

A pioneering doctor on the study of pellagra
Dr. Calès was one of the first doctors who identified pellagra in France, from 1822, in the Lauragais, alongside Doctors Jean Hameau (Landes) and Roussilhe (Aude). This disease, which has become rare in developed countries, is due to malnutrition and is manifested by dermatitis, diarrhea and, in the most severe cases, dementia. In the absence of treatment, the outcome is death. It reaches poor populations whose diet contains little tryptophan and Vitamin B3 (Niacin, Vitamin PP), as in the case of non-nixtamalized maize diets.

The observations and works of Calès made in Villefranche-de-Lauragais served as a foundation for the subsequent work of the doctor, philanthropist and politician Théophile Roussel (of the Academy of Medicine) who will contribute to publicize the disease in France, by the publication in 1845 of « De la pellagre », but especially by the second enlarged edition entitled « Traité de la pellagre et des pseudo-pellagres » published in 1866. The importance of Roussel is also to be found in his continuous action with health authorities to eradicate pellagra.

Thus, Roussel undertook a study trip to the South-West of France in 1847 and visited Dr. Calès in Villefranche to better understand this terrible plague. He will recognize in Calès the accuracy of his observations on the links of the disease with malnutrition, misery and deprivation,« ''I will limit myself to reproduce in this respect a page that wrote to me Mr. Calès in 1845. After the categorical confession of impotence [of Therapeutic Agents, A.N.] which has been formulated above in terms so expressive: « I do not pretend, » said the honorable doctor of Villefranche, « that the therapeutic agents have no action; but, forced to accept our patients with their misery, we are confessing our failures. I have obtained satisfactory results only in those who have been placed under the influence of better hygiene. The main means used by us are: baths, blood evacuations, antispasmodics, revulsives and light tonics. We will say a word of each of them:'' ''1° The baths, at the beginning of the disease, produce an excellent effect. Perhaps they would stop the progression if they were helped by a complete change in the habits of life.''

''2° The bleeding or the leeches, as soon as the irritation of the gastric mucosa or of the nervous centers appears, are almost always followed by a slight improvement; but they can only be used with great measure, otherwise they would throw the patient into a fatal weakness. Thus, it is by this way that the distinction of the life's forces into acting forces and radical forces finds its application... It seems that in some cases life is in excess, and yet there is a profound innervation which constitutes the first element of the disease.''

3° The antispasmodics have produced under our eyes no good result.

''4° The revulsives, applied after slight evacuations of blood, have reduced the cerebral accidents. I used moxas without any success in cases of paralysis.''

5° Light astringent tonics served me to moderate the diarrhea when the mucilagineux had failed and when any other treatment was inadmissible.

''« Besides, added Mr. Calès, all these resources will be powerless, if they are not employed in the early days; they will be completely useless, if you do not change the conditions in which the patient is placed ... In a word, if you do not run a more generous blood in your veins, you will always turn into a vicious circle and you will not expect anything from your care and your efforts. » One of the merits of Mr. Calès is, in my eyes, to have understood, one of the first among us, that in the treatment of pellagra, the doctor can not do everything: « The part of the administration is rather large, he was saying, let's hope it will prove being human and foresighted, as soon as we will clearly point out the disease to it, and that the studies of some men of merit will have enlightened the administration on the means of remedying it. » in « Traité de la pellagre et des pseudo-pellagres » (Treatise on pellagra and pseudo-pellagres''), p.527, Chapter: Thérapeutique, by Théophile Roussel, ed. JB Baillière and son; 1866. Public domain. In French. Read on the Archive.org website: https://archive.org/stream/traitdelapella00rous#page/526/mode/2up as well as with the maize crops of the region. He also saw in him a forerunner of the sanitary approaches against the impotence of therapeutic agents:

This sensitivity to the living conditions of the needy will underlie his future political action and his commitment to stand for the legislative elections of 23 April 1848.

A republican «fourtyeighter» deputy of the Mountain
Godefroy Calès was a very popular and advanced Republican militant in his département, and was elected on 23 April 1848, representative of Haute-Garonne at the Constituent National Assembly of the new Republic (Second Republic) declared after the Revolution of February 1848 and the overthrow of King Louis Philippe. These elections were the first to be held by universal suffrage since 1792.

Calès sat first, until 26 May 1849, in the « Committee of the Cults », a parliamentary committee of 42 members established to consider the question of a possible revision of the Concordat concluded with the Catholic Church in 1801, and consider the project of a complete Separation of the Churches and the State. The majority of the members of the committee, like a large part of the French, not wanting to reiterate the excesses of the revolution of 1789 in religious matters, and taking advantage of the climate of concord of the revolution of 1848, believed in the necessity and possibility of an agreement between Rome and the Republic, and wished to see negotiations open between Paris and the Holy See, to give the Concordat a new and more liberal foundation. They did not wish to see however the Concordat abrogated unilaterally. They also rejected the idea of a complete separation between the church and the state.

In the assembly, Calès sat with the extreme-left group of the Mountain (French: La Montagne, whose members sat on the highest benches of the Assembly), like his uncle Jean-Marie Calès half a century before (in 1792) at the National Convention. This group, in 1848, was led and organized by Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and comprising sixty-six deputies such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Pierre Leroux, Victor Schœlcher or Félicité Robert de Lamennais, some of the pioneers of socialism in history. Calès attempted to defend the political achievements and the important social benefits obtained after the Revolution of February 1848 against the attacks of the moderate Republicans and of the party of Order (a political group formed by monarchists and conservatives, led by prominent members including Adolphe Thiers, Francois Guizot, Odilon Barrot, and Alexis de Tocqueville), who were the majority in the assembly. Thus, Calès violently opposed the reactionary policy of the Assembly and voted constantly with the montagnarde left and often with the associated independent extreme left (in particular with deputies such as Étienne Arago, Victor Considerant et Edgar Quinet). He maintained a relationship of friendship with the latter (famous writer, philosopher, poet, historian, professor at the Collège de France and republican politician), which continued later with his son Jean Jules Godefroy Calès. Edgar Quinet and his wife, Hermione Ghikère Asaky, frequently visited the Calès in the family home of Villefranche-de-Lauragais and maintained an epistolary relationship. Madame Quinet wrote later:

His parliamentary work
Supporter of the freedom of expression, Calès was opposing any restrictive law on the press, such as that on the restoration of the deposits for the newspapers. However, on 9–11 August 1848, the Assembly voted the extension of press offenses, the aggravation of penalties and the increase of the deposits.

Calès had been constantly interested in the social question which was progressively rising in France since the beginning of the 19th century. He therefore supported the uprising of May and June 1848. Thus, when on 26 August 1848, the Assembly proposed the prosecution of the former member of the Provisional Government Louis Blanc and the former prefect of police Marc Caussidière, who had been accused of having participated to the uprising, Calès strongly opposed the project. Prosecutions will be finally voted by the conservative majority and maintained. Blanc and Caussidière were forced to flee on exile.

On 1 September 1848, he also opposed the project of the restoration of the « contrainte par corps » (imprisonment for debt, in criminal matters), previously suppressed by the Provisional Government. It will be finally restored by the assembly, even if slightly softened.

As humanist, Goderoy Calès was a fervent supporter of a total abolition of the death penalty. Its partial abolition (for political offenses) had been initially decreed by the Provisional Government in February 1848, at the initiative of one of its member, the famous poet Alphonse de Lamartine. A project to extend the partial abolition to a total abolition was then debated at the National Assembly on 16 September 1848. The main abolitionist speaker was the famous writer and poet Victor Hugo. However, Calès and Hugo will finally not succeed in convincing their colleagues: the project will be rejected (and abandoned until 1981).

Like his uncle Jean-Marie Calès, Godefroy was advocating a system of « representative » Republic against any possible form of republican « absolutism », founded both on a strong legislative and parliamentary power, and on a non-personalised and limited executive power. Thus, on 6 October 1848, Godefroy Calès defended the Grevy amendment, which proposed that « The National Assembly delegates the executive power to a citizen, who takes the title of president of the council of ministers, elected for a limited time, and always revocable ». Indeed, through this amendment, the young republican Jules Grevy wanted to oppose the project of an election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage, and proposed instead to obtain the election of a president of the executive, who will be always revocable by the National Assembly, thus refusing to legitimize the power to one single person above everything: however, following Lamartine's recommendation, the majority of the deputies rejected the amendment. The date of the presidential election was thus set for 10 December 1848.

On 2 November 1848, still supporting social progress in society, Calès voted in favor of the Right to labor, defended at the speaker's tribune by Ledru-Rollin. Nevertheless, the final formula of the compromise, due to Lamartine, obliged the Republic to provide work for the needy « within the limits of its resources ».

On 25 November 1848, he voted against the parliamentary decree: « The General Cavaignac has well deserved from the Homeland » . Being accused of having allowed the June insurrection to flourish, and before violently crushing it, sacrificing thousands of National Guards, General Cavaignac gave explanations at the occasion of a public debate, which took place at the Assembly on 25 November. The debate turned to his advantage, and the Assembly almost unanimously confirmed the previous decree of 28 June 1848. Godefroy Calès, together with Victor Hugo, was one of the only thirty-four representatives who voted against.

Among other social measures debated in public at the parliament, Calès voted on 27 December 1848, in favor of the abolition of the tax on salt (against Government's recommendation), which was solicited by representatives of rural regions; on 2 May 1849, for the amnesty of the transported, and on 18 May 1849, for the abolition of the tax on beverages.

On 16 April 1849, Calès voted against the credits allocated to the Expedition of Rome and to sending an expeditionary force commanded by General Oudinot. The expedition was nevertheless voted by the National Assembly to initially provide aid to the Roman republicans, insurgent against the pretensions of Pope Pius IX expelled from Rome and against the Austrian domination. It was accompanied by the vote of a 1,200,000 francs loan, for the expenses of the first three months of the operation, to which the Socialists led by Ledru-Rollin opposed. Calès unsuccessfully signed the request for indictment of the President of the Republic Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte – the future emperor Napoleon III – and of the ministers guilty of violating the constitution: in the following weeks, the French troops will finally receive the order of the Prince-President and Odilon Barrot to crush the Roman Revolution led by the republicans Giuseppe Mazzini and General Garibaldi.

Towards the dissolution of the Constituent assembly
Godefroy Calès vividly opposed the Rateau proposal: after the election of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte as President of the Republic on 11 December 1848, and the nomination of the conservative cabinet Odilon Barrot on le 20 December 1848, the party of Order wanted to take advantage of its state of grace and to get rid as quickly as possible of the republican representatives who were opposing the right-wing government. He thus called for the rapid dissolution of the Constituent National Assembly of 1848 before the term of its legislature, and the election of a new Legislative Assembly. Supported by the government, the « Rateau proposal » was opposed by many representatives, from the deputies of the Mountain to some moderate republicans like Alphonse de Lamartine, Adolphe Billault or Jules Grévy, who felt that the task of the Constituent Assembly was not over. Vigorously discussed on 12 January 1849, Godefroy Calès and the Left couldn't prevent its adoption on 29 January.

Thus, on 26 May 1849, the Constituent National Assembly held its final seance. Godefroy Calès did not belong to the newly elected Legislative National Assembly of 1849, nor to other Assemblies. He came back to his region of Villefranche-de-Lauragais to resume his activity of physician, until his death on 25 July 1868, at the age of 69.

He was married to madame Zulmée Calès (born Léonie Alphonsine Zulmée Metgé), with whom he got a son on 24 July 1828, Jean Jules Godefroy, who will also become a physician, and will be elected Mayor of Villefranche-de-Lauragais in 1875, and Deputy of Haute-Garonne in 1885, under the Third Republic.

Genealogy
Godefroy Calès is:
 * the nephew of Jean-Marie Calès (1757–1834), regicide and deputy at the National Convention (1792–1795) and at the Council of Five Hundred (1795–1798).
 * the nephew of Jean-Chrysostôme Calès (1769–1853), colonel of the Great Army and baron of the Empire. He has also been elected representative of the ephemeral Chamber of Representatives created by Napoleon during the period of the Hundred Days in 1815.
 * the father of Jean Jules Godefroy Calès (1828–1889), deputy at the Chamber of Deputies (Third Republic) (1885–1889).

Hommage

 * The name of Godefroy Calès resurfaced in the 1930s during the apogee of the Radical Party in France. In search of an affirmation of his identity on the Left, the figure of Calès will be singularly commemorated in an article of the « Le Radical », the press organ of the party, on 11 May 1930.