Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg
Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg (born February 12, 1709 in Mayenne , † December 14, 1779 in Paris ) was a French medic, polymath and publisher. He gained particular fame through the translation of Benjamin Franklin's writings into French. As a supporter of the ideals of the American Revolution , he actively supported the American War of Independence as a publicist and as an intermediary in financial and commercial transactions between France and the rebellious Thirteen Colonies .
He used different pseudonyms , such as Zoïlomastix, Boniface Diastille, Abraham Mansword, Samuel Jones and others.
Life
Origin and education
Dubourg was born in 1709 in Mayenne, a small northern French town in the Pays de la Loire region. He went through extensive academic training, beginning with a course in philosophy, which he took when he was sixteen. He studied theology, mathematics and medicine at the Collège Royale in Paris , and during this time also learned modern languages such as Italian and English. With many interests, he completed his studies in 1748 as a doctor of medicine.
Medic, polymath, and publisher
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As a doctor, he turned against the common practice of bloodletting in inflammation and wrote a pamphlet in 1765 in which he stated that pregnancies did not last exactly nine months - as was widely assumed at the time - but were lengthened or shortened for various reasons could. He found less pleasure in medical practice than in research, and towards the end of his life he largely gave up his actual job and only treated his friends or destitute needy people. He recorded his medical and ethical principles in a collection of aphorisms, which were published posthumously in 1780 under the title Elémens de Médecine .
Between 1761 and 1762 he published the journal Gazette d'Épidaure, ou Recueil de nouvelles de Médecine , in which he commented on a variety of topics of practical medicine as well as on philosophical and theoretical aspects of the subject. He also printed some letters from Benjamin Franklin for the first time in the Gazette d'Épidaure .
In 1767 he published the two-volume work Le Botaniste françois , in which he - following his friend, the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon - described native plants in the most precise way. But Dubourg's interests were not limited to the natural sciences. During the lifetime of the British politician and philosopher Henry Bolingbroke , he made a translation of his Letters on the Study and Use of History , which he published in Paris in 1752, a year after Bolingbroke's death. A year later, Dubourg's Chronographie, ou Description des tems , was published, which contained a tabular summary of the story in the form of 35 chronologically processed tables. Rolled up on two cylinders, the viewer was able to get an overview of the most important events and years of reign of important rulers from the creation of the world to the year 1753.
Friendship with Franklin and promoter of the American Revolution
During his first stay in Paris in 1767, Dubourg met Franklin personally. This led to a correspondence that lasted until Dubourg's death, in the course of which a number of Franklin's writings were translated into French and published. The intellectual closeness to Franklin was particularly evident in Dubourg's Petit Code de la raison humaine , which Dubourg first published in 1771 and revised in 1773 and 1782. Under the influence of Franklin's research on electricity , Dubourg designed an umbrella with a lightning rod to protect against lightning strikes during thunderstorms. The umbrella and a comparable women's hat became the latest fashion craze in France, particularly in Paris, in 1778 .
In the course of his friendship with Franklin, Dubourg developed into an avid supporter of the American Revolution . Even before its outbreak, Dubourg wrote and distributed essays in which he advocated the colonists' cause. After the outbreak of the American War of Independence , he also played an active role in supporting the American rebels by initiating commercial and financial deals. Dubourg was chosen by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia because of his enthusiasm for the American cause and his close relationship with Franklin as the contact for the first emissaries sent to France, but was later replaced by Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais .
During the American Revolutionary War, Dubourg spent such large sums of money in support of the insurgent colonists that he was practically penniless when he died in December 1779.
In 1775 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society .
His biographer Alfred Owen Aldridge described Dubourg as "undoubtedly the first French supporter of the American Revolution".
Fonts (selection)
- Chronographie, ou Description des tems, contenant toute la suite des souverains de l'univers et des principaux événements de chaque siècle… (Paris 1753), available online via Gallica , the digitization project of the French National Library.
- Gazette d'Épidaure, ou Recueil de nouvelles de Médecine avec des réflexions pour simplifier la théorie et éclairer la pratique (Paris 1762).
- Le Botaniste françois, comprenant toutes les plantes communes et usuelles… (two volumes, Paris 1767), available online from Google Books .
- Petit Code de la raison humaine, ou Exposition succincte de ce que la raison dicte à tous les hommes pour éclairer leur conduite et assurer leur bonheur (first Paris 1771), in the edition from 1789 available online via Google Books.
- Barbeu du Bourg's, non-profit medical science, or of maintaining health, knowledge and healing of diseases: in short sentences; the result of many years of experience; From the French with annotations . 2nd edition. Strasburg 1788. Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf
literature
- Alfred Owen Aldridge: Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg, a French Disciple of Benjamin Franklin , in: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 95, 4 (1951), pp. 331-392.
- Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt: Barbeu-Dubourgs learning machine , in: Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt, The art of diagrammatics . Perspectives of a new paradigm of image science, 2nd completely revised and expanded edition, Bielefeld 2017, pp. 95-106
Web links
- Digitized writings of Barbeu-Dubourg on Gallica , the digitization project of the French National Library.
- Visualizing chronolgy.
Individual evidence
- ^ BNF personal data: Jacques Barbeu Du Bourg (1709–1779). Retrieved December 7, 2018 (French).
- ↑ a b BARBEU DU BOURG | Dictionnaire of the journalist. Retrieved December 7, 2018 .
- ↑ On this and the following compare Aldridge, Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg , passim.
- ↑ Research on the durée de la grossesse et le terme de l'accouchement. Amsterdam, 1765.
- ^ Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg: Oeuvres de M. Franklin, traduites de l'Anglois sur la quatrième édition par M. Barbeu Dubourg . tape 1 . Quillau, Paris 1773 ( full text in Google Book Search [accessed March 28, 2017]).
- ^ Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg: Petit Code de la raison humaine . 1789 ( full text in Google Book Search [accessed March 30, 2017]).
- ↑ Louis Figuier: Les Merveilles de la science ou description populaire des inventions modern. Volume 1, Furne, Jouvet et Cie, Paris 1867, chapter Le Paratonnerre. Pp. 491-597; in the French Wikisource
- ↑ For more details on this, Aldridge, Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg , pp. 349–392.
- ^ Member History: Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg. American Philosophical Society, accessed April 19, 2018 .
- ^ "Yet he was undeniably the first French supporter of the American Revolution", Aldridge, Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg , p. 349.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Barbeu-Dubourg, Jacques |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Barbeu du Bourg, Jacques |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French medic, botanist, author, encyclopedist and translator |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 12, 1709 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mayenne |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 14, 1779 |
| Place of death | Paris |