François Pourfour du Petit

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François Pourfour du Petit.

François Pourfour du Petit (born June 24, 1664 in Paris , † June 18, 1741 ibid) was a French anatomist and physiologist .

Life

François Pourfour du Petit was the son of a merchant and lost his parents in childhood. He received his early training at the Collège de Beauvais. To increase his physical knowledge, he made a trip through Belgium and France. He is said to have met a certain blond woman in La Rochelle , who not only offered him his library, botanical garden and natural history cabinet for free use, but also gave him lessons in the basics of anatomy and thus aroused the inclination to study medicine in du Petit have. 1687 du Petit went to Montpellier , heard at the city's university lectures on medicine and earned a doctorate in 1690. He then returned to Paris and studied anatomy under Du Verney , botany under Tournefort and chemistry under Lémery , whose friendship he soon made.

Thereupon du Petit turned to the study of surgery at the Charité and in 1693 was employed as a doctor in the Flemish army of Louis XIV . In this function he gave the assistant physicians lessons in anatomy, chemistry and botany and acquired a very important herbarium . After the Peace of Rijswijk in 1697, du Petit returned to Paris, but returned to the army when the War of the Spanish Succession broke out and only left the army in 1713 after the Peace of Utrecht in order to settle permanently in Paris. In 1722 he became a member of the Académie des Sciences . He died in Paris in 1741 at the age of 77.

Du Petit mainly dealt with eye diseases and sought to improve the operation of cataracts with instruments and new methods. In Namur , he carried out important physiological experiments at the Hôpitaux du Roi between 1710 and 1712, and in Paris in the 1720s. In 1710 he discovered the contralaterality of the brain in controlling movement. A year earlier, Domenico Mistichelli (1675-1715) described the crossing of the pyramid railway .

Fonts

  • Trois lettres d'un médecin des hôpitaux du roi à un autre médecin de ses amis sur un nouveau système du cerveau , Namur 1710
  • Mémoire sur plusieurs découvertes faites dans les yeux de l'homme… , Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences, 1723
  • Sur l'opération de la cataracte , Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences, 1724
  • Mémoire dans lequel il est démontré que les nerfs intercostaux fournissent des rameaux qui portent des esprits dans les yeux , Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences, 1727
  • Différentes manières de connaître la grandeur des chambres de l'humeur aqueuse dans les yeux de l'homme , Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences, 1727 (here du Petit described his ophthalmometer )
  • Dissertation on une nouvelle méthode de faire l'opération de la cataracte , Paris 1727
  • Lettre dans laquelle il est démontré que le cristallin est fort près de l'uvée et où l'on rapporte de nouvelles preuves de l'opération de la cataracte , Paris 1729
  • Lettres contenant des réflexions sur ce que M. Herquet, DM a fait imprimer touchant les maladies des yeux , Paris 1729
  • Mémoire sur le cristallin de l'œil de l'homme, des animaux à quatre pieds… , Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences, 1730
  • Lettres contenant des réflexions sur des découvertes faites sur les yeux , Paris 1732

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ A b François Pourfour du Petit , in: Who Named It ?, Dictionary of medical eponyms
  2. ↑ a b c J. Rosenbaum: Petit, François Pourfour du , in: Johann Samuelansch, Johann Gottfried Gruber: (Ed.): Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste , 3rd section, 19th part (1844), p. 169 .
personal data
SURNAME Pourfour du Petit, François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French anatomist, physiology
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1664
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1741
Place of death Paris