Abstract
In 1789, Henri Descremps published Les Petites Aventures de Jérôme Sharp (The Little Adventures of Jerome Sharp ), in which he tells the story of an educated but ruined young man who crosses France from Marseille to Paris and encounters a gallery of charlatans : itinerant doctors, " banquistes " showmen, fake scholars, beaux esprits and " literary charlatans ". " The world is full of charlatans of all kinds ", writes the narrator, who insists on the protean character of charlatanism, often all the more dangerous because it presents itself in the guise of modest, disinterested scholars blurring the boundary between true science and spectacular imposture.The novel contributes to extending the domain of charlatanism far beyond medicine. A charlatan is someone who deceives the public into believing he possesses secrets.
Decremps, already the author of La Magie blanche dévoilée, which revealed the tricks of the famous magician Pinetti, thus continues his crusade against the misuse of knowledge : his aim is not to suppress the marvelous, but to transform magic into pure entertainment by revealing the " tricks ", and to replace secrecy with the publicity of knowledge. Against a backdrop of increasing numbers of public lectures on amusing physics, the success of aerostation and medical electricity, and the blending of science, spectacle and commerce in the public arena, the figure of the charlatan shifted to the murky margins between laboratory, boulevard and therapeutic practice.
To defend himself against charlatanism, Jérôme promotes three main remedies : a useful science at the service of material progress, the exercise of critical thinking through reading and, finally, the systematic disclosure of tricks and secrets. On this basis, Decremps defended an ideal of popular, democratic and playful science, opposed both to profit-hungry impostors and to a " aristocracy of scholars " jealous of its privileges. During the Revolution, he further radicalized this position with La Science sanculotisée.
