The eldest child of Jean Mara, (
Giovanni Mara), a native of
Cagliari in
Sardinia, and Louise Cabrol of
Geneva, Marat was born in Switzerland, at
Boudry in the principality of
Neuchâtel, on
May 24, 1743. His father was a
Mercedarian "commendator" and religious refugee who converted to Calvinism in Geneva, his mother was a
Huguenot. At the age of 16, aware of the limited opportunities for outsiders (his highly educated father was turned down for several teaching posts), Marat set off on his travels. After spending two years in
Bordeaux as a private tutor, he settled briefly in
Paris before moving to London, where he studied medicine and practised informally as a doctor. He also published several philosophical and medical works.
His first published work, written in
English and later published in his native
French in Amsterdam, was a
Philosophical Essay on Man (1772), which demonstrates extensive knowledge of
English, French,
German, Italian and
Spanish philosophers. His essay attacked the materialist philosopher
Helvétius, who in his
De l'Esprit ("On the Mind", 1758) which reduced all Man's faculties to physical sensation alone and his actions as motivated by self-interest alone. His professed belief that philosophy had no need for science was refuted by Marat who argued that a knowledge of
physiology could solve the eternal problem of the mind-body connection and the location of the soul, which he argued was found in the
meninges. Voltaire's sharp critique (in defense of his friend
Helvétius) brought the young Marat to wider attention for the first time and only helped to reinforce Marat's growing sense of division between the materialists, grouped around
Voltaire on one side, and their opponents, grouped around
Rousseau on the other.
In 1774, Marat published
The Chains of Slavery, urging constituencies to reject the (British) king's friends as candidates for
Parliament. According to Marat, this book brought him honorary memberships in the patriotic societies of
Carlisle, Berwick-upon-Tweed and
Newcastle.
An essay on gleets (
gonorrhea) probably helped him to secure an honorary medical degree from
St. Andrews University in 1775. On his return to London he published an
Enquiry into the Nature, Cause, and Cure of a Singular Disease of the Eyes.
In 1776, he moved to
Paris via a brief stopover in Geneva to visit his family. Here his reputation as a highly effective doctor, along with the patronage of his mistress and former patient, the Marquise de l'Aubespine, secured him a position as physician to the bodyguard of the comte d'Artois (afterwards
Charles X of France) in 1777, which paid 2,000
livres a year plus allowances.
Marat was soon in great demand as a court doctor among the aristocracy and he used his new-found wealth to set up a laboratory in his mistress's house. Soon he was publishing works on fire/heat, electricity and light. Even
Brissot, in his
Mémoires, admitted Marat's influence in the scientific world of Paris. However, when he presented his scientific researches to the
Académie des Sciences, they were not approved and he failed to be accepted as a member. In particular, the academicians were appalled by his temerity in disagreeing with the great (and hitherto uncriticized)
Newton. Marat wrote to
Benjamin Franklin who visited him on several occasions.
Goethe always regarded his rejection by the academy as a glaring example of scientific despotism.
In 1780 Marat published a
Plan de législation criminelle, inspired by the work of
Beccaria. In April 1786 he resigned his court appointment and, over the next few years, completed a new translation of Newton's
Opticks (1787) and
Mémoires académiques, ou nouvelles découvertes sur la lumière. ("Academic memoirs, or new discoveries about light," 1788), a collection of essays including a study on the effect of light on soap bubbles.
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