Jean-Joseph Menuret

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Jean-Joseph Menuret (often incorrectly also: Jean-Jacques ; * 1733 in Montélimar , † December 15, 1815 in Paris ), called Menuret de Chambaud , was a French doctor and author of a number of medical treatises. As one of the employees in the creation of the Encyclopédie , he wrote more than 80 articles on the subject of medicine.

Life

Career during the ancien regime

After attending school, Menuret began studying medicine at the University of Montpellier , where he preferred to attend lectures by Antoine Fizers . After completing his studies, Menuret returned to his homeland in Montélimar in 1758 , where he headed the city's hospital for more than 25 years.

First page of the article Mort (Ger. Death ) in the Encyclopédie

More theoretician than the practitioner, he sent the Abbé Expilly in 1765 an extensive article on Montélimar for his Dictionnaire de la France et des Gaulles . This was followed by articles in Hautesierck's Recueil d'observations de médicins des hôpitaux militaires ( Eng . "Collection of observations by doctors at military hospitals"), in which Menuret discussed problems from his practical work, such as the medical-topographical history of the city of Montélimar or a treatise on one epidemic disease, observed in Montélimar in 1767 . In addition, he drew attention to himself with a series of lexicon articles for the Encyclopédie Denis Diderots , including the articles Inflammation , Mort , Pouls and Somnambulisme (some of them marked by name with the addition "Article de M. Menuret", but mostly with the abbreviation (m) "). For his dissertation, published in 1781 with the title Essai sur l'action de l'air dans les maladies contagieuses , he was awarded a prize by the Royal Medical Society in Paris.

His close contact with the encyclopedists confirmed him in 1785 in the decision to leave Montélimar and go to Paris , where he first got a job as a veterinarian at the stables of Louis XVI through the mediation of his friends . found. A short time later, Marie-Thérèse de Savoie (1756-1805), the wife of the later French King Charles X , noticed him and took him into her service. Not only through the writings he had written so far, but also as a correspondent for the Societé royale des sciences , he achieved a certain reputation at court and in upper class Parisian society and thus apparently felt obliged to add the name of his great-grandmother Madeleine de Chambaud to his maiden name.

Revolution, emigration and the last few years

Title page of Menuret's Essai sur la ville de Hambourg

Two years after the outbreak of the French Revolution , he joined the staff of the French General Charles-François Dumouriez and accompanied him on his campaign as part of the First Coalition War . After Dumouriez's plan to invade Paris and overthrow the revolutionary government failed, Menuret had to leave France and went into exile with Dumouriez in Germany.

Menuret lived as an emigrant in Hamburg and there - under the impression of the poor living conditions of the poorer classes in the Gängeviertel - wrote a pamphlet published in 1797 with the title Essai sur la ville de Hamburg, considérée dans ses rapports avec la santé, ou lettres sur l'histoire médico-topographique de cette ville . The work was published in the same year in a German translation under the title Experiment about the city of Hamburg viewed in terms of health or letters about the medical-topographical history of this city and aroused violent opposition in Hamburg. Menuret had portrayed the city and its residents as backward, especially at a time when the population perceived the French emigrants - the number of whom they overestimated - as the main culprits for the sharp price increases and a general “moral neglect”.

After the change of power in France through the coup d'état of 18th Brumaire VIII and the amnesty for emigrants issued under Napoleon , Menuret returned to Paris in 1802. In the following years he frequented the capital's intellectual circles and devoted himself mainly to social and charitable issues. More concerned with philanthropic ideas than with his own livelihood, he died impoverished on December 15, 1815.

family

Menuret's first marriage to Louise Cartier de Boismartin from Valence was childless. When Louise died in 1773, Menuret married Marie-Elisabeth Monneron (* 1745), the daughter of Antoine Claude Monneron (1703–1791), a tax farmer from Annonay , Ardèche and sister of Augustin Monneron . From this marriage a son, André Menuret - who remained single - and two daughters, Joséphine Menuret and Alexandre Menuret, emerged.

Articles in the Encyclopédie (selection)

Independent fonts (selection)

  • Nouveau Traité du Pouls. Amsterdam 1767; Paris 1768
  • Avis aux mères sur la petite vérole et la rougeole, ou lettres à M me de *** sur la manière de traiter et de gouverner ses enfants dans ces maladies. Lyon 1770
  • Essai sur l'action de l'air dans les maladies contagieuses. Diss., Paris 1781
  • Essai sur l'action médico-topographique. Paris 1786
  • Observations sur le débit du sel après la suppression de la gabelle, relative à la santé et l'intérêt des citoyens. 1790
  • Mémoire sur la culture des jachères. Paris 1790 (awarded a prize from the Societé royale d'Agriculture )
  • Essai sur les moyens de former de bons médecins, sur obligations les réciproques des médecins et de la société. Paris 1791 (second, greatly expanded edition Paris 1814)
  • Essai sur la ville de Hambourg, considérée dans ses rapports avec la santé, ou lettres sur l'histoire médico-topographique de cette ville. Hamburg 1797 (published in the same year - also in Hamburg - in a German translation by the Hamburg notary Martin Gottfried Herrmann Kaiser under the title Trial about the city of Hamburg in terms of health or letters about the medical-topographical history of this city )
  • Considérations sur l'état de la médecine et des médecins en France… 1809
  • Discours on the réunion de l'utile à l'agréable, même en médecine. 1809

literature

  • Article "Menuret de Chambaud, Jean-Joseph", in: Frank Arthur Kafker: The encyclopedists as individuals: a biographical dictionary of the authors of the Encyclopédie , Oxford 1988, ISBN 0-7294-0368-8 , pp. 254-257
  • Article “Menuret de Chambaud (Jean-Joseph et non Jean-Jacques)”, in: J. Brun-Durand, Dictionnaire biographique… de la Drôme , Volume 1, Paris 1900, pp. 234–241
  • Article “Menuret de Chambaud (Jean-Jacques)”, in: Jean Chrétien Ferdinand Hoefer , Nouvelle biographie générale , Volume 34: Martialis Gargilius - Mérard de Saint-Just, Paris 1861, pp. 225–227
  • Article “Menuret (Jean-Jacques)”, in: Adolphe Rochas, Biographie du Dauphiné , Volume 2: Labastie, ou Labâtie, Jean-Jacques - Jean d'Yse de Saléon, Paris 1860, pp. 228-233

Web links

Wikisource: Jean-Joseph Menuret  - Sources and full texts (French)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Frank A. Kafker: Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie. Année (1990) Volume 8 Numéro 8 p. 103
  2. ^ Genealogy of Marie-Elisabeth Monneron
  3. ↑ Genealogy of the father Antoine Claude Monneron
personal data
SURNAME Menuret, Jean-Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Menuret de Chambaud, Jean-Jacques
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French physician, author of medical treatises and encyclopedist
DATE OF BIRTH 1733
PLACE OF BIRTH Montélimar
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 1815
Place of death Paris