Royal rhinos, knitted wombs and anal surgery — Versailles comes to the Science Museum

The glittering place of Versaille, famous for court intrigue and its wealth, was also a hotbed of science. The Science Museum has brought together some of the glittering and the grim to tell the little-told tale of French science in the dying centuries of the French monarchy.

For all the grand paintings and grand science on display, there is probably something rather plain in the exhibition that shows how the palace worked at its best and worst.

In 1686, Louis XIV of France (1638 – 1715) developed an anal fistula, and months of treatments had failed to fix it, leaving the King barely able to walk. His surgeon, Charles-François Félix carried out a successful operation, that was so successful that it even became fashionable to be similarly afflicted, such was the craven need of the courtiers to please the King.

However, the surgeon had to practice and he experimented on 75 poor people before operating on the King. That’s the dark side of the science being developed in an absolute monarchy, as some of the test case subjects also died from their unnecessary operations. However, once you get away from the King’s immediate orbit, science in France flourishes, and the exhibition tells the stories of the inventors and their inventions.

The science was both of the cosmos, as well as of nature, and one of the oddest things in this exhibition is a large rhinoceros that had been presented to Louis XV when alive, and stuffed when it died.

At the other end of the size scale, knitted wombs and babies were created to teach rural doctors and midwives about childbirth, showing that the science did reach the ordinary folk in places.

I was particularly fascinated by plans for floating fortresses that was designed to float outside a port and then be sunk to form manmade islands.

It was a — for the standards of the time — relatively egalitarian in science, with plenty of women gaining renown for their scientific prowess. At least if they had been rich enough to afford an education. Égalité wasn’t quite that liberal yet.

It was also international in outlook, with French translations of English books such as Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, some of which are still in use today.

The museum has made a lot of the fact that they have included a world-famous watch in the exhibition, which is here in the UK for the first time. It took 40 years for the master watchmaker, Abraham-Louis Breguet to construct it for Queen Marie Antoinette. However, compared to the rest of the exhibition, it’s almost easy to overlook, and being a small watch, quite literally easy to miss, as the intricate workmanship is too small to see.

The larger objects on display are much better. Although they may be less illustrious, they are far easier to admire and to understand what they are showing.

As an exhibition, I suspect many of us will be unfamiliar with the names of the people in it, but those that we do recognise will often surprise us with their unexpected understanding of the sciences of the time.

Spanning the reign of the last three rulers of the French monarchy, when absolute power was at its height, as was the arrogance that would lead to the French Revolution.

Science continued to advance even if the monarchy didn’t.

It’s an exhibition that tells a tale many of us familiar with the idea of Versaille as a palace may have never thought about — the freedom that great wealth gave to discard the menial efforts of work in favour of discovery through experimentation and study.

The exhibition, Versailles: Science and Splendour is at the Science Museum until late April 2025.

Entry is £12 per person, and tickets can be booked in advance here, or bought on the day.