or did Maupertuis also talk about doctors and biology?
He did. He also suggested vivisections of prisoners as part of medical research, as far as I recall from the Voltaire and the Maupertuis bios. (The Maupertuis biographer basically goes...he was tired?... on that one as far as I recall.)
The other thing to keep in minds is that according to what I've read, Voltaire parodied several of Maupertuis' own essays for this. Since we haven't read the original essays, we're a bit lost for context here. I imagine it's like watching that Star Wars parody, Spaceballs, without being familiar with anything Star Wars. One gets it's a parody, but if you don't know what exactly it's spoofing, some of the fun would be inevitably lost. That's the problem with most satire. For contemporaries like Wilhelmine and Lehndorff, both of whom ought to have in theory disapproved of this pamphlet, it was incredibly funny - Lehndorff's "Voltaire bad, but wow, Akakia is hilarious!" diary entry reads almost identical to Wilhelmine's letter to Fritz saying "Undoubtedly he's behaved badly towards you, but wow, Akakia is funny!". They, of course, had the entire context and got all the jokes, and we just don't.
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Re: The Diatribe of Doctor Akakia
Date: 2021-08-26 07:13 am (UTC)He did. He also suggested vivisections of prisoners as part of medical research, as far as I recall from the Voltaire and the Maupertuis bios. (The Maupertuis biographer basically goes...he was tired?... on that one as far as I recall.)
The other thing to keep in minds is that according to what I've read, Voltaire parodied several of Maupertuis' own essays for this. Since we haven't read the original essays, we're a bit lost for context here. I imagine it's like watching that Star Wars parody, Spaceballs, without being familiar with anything Star Wars. One gets it's a parody, but if you don't know what exactly it's spoofing, some of the fun would be inevitably lost. That's the problem with most satire. For contemporaries like Wilhelmine and Lehndorff, both of whom ought to have in theory disapproved of this pamphlet, it was incredibly funny - Lehndorff's "Voltaire bad, but wow, Akakia is hilarious!" diary entry reads almost identical to Wilhelmine's letter to Fritz saying "Undoubtedly he's behaved badly towards you, but wow, Akakia is funny!". They, of course, had the entire context and got all the jokes, and we just don't.