Claude-Nicolas Le Cat

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Claude-Nicolas Le Cat

Claude-Nicolas Le Cat (born September 6, 1700 in Blérancourt ( Département Aisne ), † August 20, 1768 in Rouen ) was a French surgeon and physiologist .

Life

Claude-Nicolas Le Cat was the son of the surgeon Claude Le Cat and the doctor's daughter Anne-Marie Méresse. He was interested in a wide variety of disciplines at an early age and initially decided to become a clergyman. He gave up this profession and became a military engineer out of a predilection for mathematics , but did not stay there either, but eventually took up his father's profession, who gave him his first lessons in surgery . He then went to Paris in 1726 , where he pursued further surgical studies, but had not yet finished them when he was called to Rouen by the Archbishop of Rouen, Monseigneur de Tressan , in 1729 . There he received the post of deputy chief surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu in 1731 . In January 1733 he became a doctor of medicine in Reims and in 1734 a master's degree in surgery in Rouen, where he finally settled in the same year. He taught anatomy and surgery here with great success in a school opened in 1736 . In 1738 he received the title of royal professor and demonstrator in surgery. In 1742 he married Marie-Marguerite Champossin, only 13 years old, with whom he had a daughter, Charlotte-Bonne.

From 1732 to 1738, Le Cat competed for the prizes awarded by the Surgical Academy and won almost all of them. The academy recently asked him not to appear as a candidate for their awards. Nevertheless, he made another such application under a strange name in 1755 and again won the prize. The Leopoldine Academy accepted him on January 25, 1754 under the academic surname Plistonicus IV. ( Ie one who has achieved many victories) among its members ( matriculation no. 586 ). From 1739 he was a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris.

Le Cat was particularly concerned with the surgical removal of bladder stones and made a name for himself with an improved method of stone cutting . He particularly cultivated the lateral stone incision , for which he invented or perfected several instruments, the urethrotome , the cystitoma and the Gorgeret cystitoma . In defense of the latter instrument he led a heated controversy with Jean Baseilhac (1703–1781), a stone cutter, Paris surgeon and inventor of numerous medical instruments known by his religious name, Frère Côme . Furthermore, in 1743 he invented a sick lifter for very heavy people and improved the ambe of Hippocrates . He was a very skilled surgeon, but not averse to advertising. He also dealt with mathematics , war architecture and philosophy, among other disciplines, without, however, his related work, which is partly in journals such as the Journal de Verdun , Journal de Trévoux , Journal de savants and the Mercure , very scientific, rather often purely hypothetical are.

In 1744 Le Cat was one of the founders of the Académie royale des sciences, belles-lettres et arts in Rouen and in 1752 became its lifelong secretary for the class of sciences and arts. He was elected a member of many learned societies in Europe, as well as of the Academy of Surgery in Paris. He was a devout Catholic, a friend of Fontenelle and Voltaire and an opponent of Rousseau's ideas .

As a reward for his services, Le Cat was in 1762 by King Louis XV. ennobled, and he was offered an annual pension of 2,000 francs. A fire destroyed part of his library and the manuscript of a work on which he had worked for many years. His health had suffered from his excessive literary work, he began to be ailing and died on August 20, 1768 at the age of almost 68 in Rouen. His son-in-law, the surgeon Jean-Pierre David , followed him in all of his offices.

Fonts (selection)

  • Dissertation sur le dissolvant de la pierre, et en particulier sur celui de Mademoiselle Stéphens , Rouen 1739
  • Mémoires couronnes par l'Académie de chirurgie , in the 1st volume from their collection
  • Traité des sens , Rouen 1739; Paris 1740; Amsterdam 1744; English London 1750
  • Lettre concernant l'opération de la taille, pratiquée dans les deux sexes , Rouen 1749
  • Recueil des pièces concernant l'opération de la taille, et réponse à un anonyme , 2 vols. Rouen 1749–63 (polemic against the Frère Côme)
  • Dissertation on l'existence et la nature du fluide des nerfs et son usage pour le mouvement musculaire , Berlin 1753, awarded by the local academy
  • Traité de la couleur de la peau humaine en général, de celle des nègres en particulier… , Amsterdam 1765
  • Nouveau système sur la cause de l évacuation périodique de sexe , Amsterdam 1765
  • Parallèle de la taille latérale de M. Le Cat avec celle du lithotome caché , Amsterdam 1766 ( continuation of the polemic against the Brother Côme, published under the name of Alexandre-Pierre Nahuys )
  • Traité des sensations et des passions en général, et des sens en particulier , 2 vols., Paris 1766
  • Œuvres physiologiques , 3 vols. Paris 1767
  • Cours abrégé d'ostéologie , Rouen 1768
  • Mémoire posthume sur les incendies spontanés de l'économie animale , posthumous, Paris 1813

literature

Web links

Commons : Claude-Nicolas Le Cat  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Member entry of Claude-Nicolas Le Cat at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on May 3, 2016.
  2. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter L. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 10, 2020 (French).
  3. ↑ August Hirsch : Biographical Lexicon of the Outstanding Doctors of All Times and Nations . (Ed. With E. Gurlt) 6 volumes, Urban & Schwarzenberg, Vienna and Leipzig 1884 to 1888 (unchanged reprint Mansfield, undated .; 2nd edition, reviewed and supplemented by Wilhelm Haberling , Franz Hübotter and Hermann Vierordt. 5 volumes and Supplementary volume, Berlin and Vienna 1929–1935; unchanged edition Munich 1962), Volume 1, p. 368.
personal data
SURNAME Le Cat, Claude-Nicolas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French surgeon and physiologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1700
PLACE OF BIRTH Blérancourt ( Aisne department )
DATE OF DEATH August 20, 1768
Place of death Rouen