Jean Pecquet

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Jean Pecquet (born May 9, 1622 in Dieppe in Normandy , † February 1674 in Paris ) was a French anatomist.

biography

Not taken for granted at the time, Pecquet went to a Catholic school as a child. He was then sent to the Jesuit College in Rouen . Then he looked for a job. His first employer was a noblewoman who took him into service in 1641. When she moved to Paris in 1645, she took Pecquet with her. However, the lady died in 1646 and he was therefore forced to look for a new employer. The prior of the Collegue de Clermont made sure that a noble student took over the tutorship , which gave him the financial means for further studies. In a roundabout way, he met Nicolas Fouquet , who took him into service and made his further studies possible. With this he undertook a trip to Rome and returned to Paris in 1648.

Pecquet continued his medical studies, which he began in Paris in 1646, in Montpellier in 1651, where he received his doctorate in 1652.

During his studies in 1648, he performed the autopsy of a live dog, opening the thorax . He noticed a white, milk-like liquid that he assumed was lymphatic fluid . He found that the structures that conduct this “milky sap” do not flow into the liver, but end in the superior vena cava and in a reservoir, the lumbar cistern (in the Francophone- speaking area, Cisterna de Pecquet ), behind the stomach. As a result, he described for the first time the thoracic duct that he had discovered and the differences between veins and lymphatic vessels .

He also formulated his theories about blood uptake, capillary action and the permeability of vessels . He published the research results in 1651 under the title Experimenta Nova Anatomica. under his scientific pseudonym Joannis Pecqueti .

After receiving his doctorate, Pecquet practiced in Paris and became a doctor of the social elite. He became the personal physician of the Marquise de Sévigné.

In 1661 Nicolas Fouquet was arrested. Pecquet followed his master as a personal physician in the Bastille until February 1665. Then Fourquet was transferred to the prison of Pignerol, and Pecquet was instructed to go to Dieppe to his sister. It should stay there until further notice. This stay was to last a year until King Louis XIV and Foreign Minister Colbert came to the conclusion that Pecquet was not to blame for his master. Colbert went even further and nominated him in 1666 for the Académie des Sciences as an anatomist . Jean Pecquet was able to participate in the transfusion experiments of the Académie. A few years later, between 1666 and 1670, he was appointed personal physician to the king. This secured him considerable appanage . In 1666, the year it was founded, he became a member of the Académie royale des sciences .

Pecquet researched together with Edme Mariotte , the discoverer of the blind spot , and published with him in 1668 the text Nouvelle découverte touchant la veüe . He also made experiments with mercury tubes because he suspected that atmospheric pressure has an influence on blood circulation.

Although Pecquet was very prosperous and even owned a house, he himself lived in poor circumstances. His last domicile was an attic apartment, which consisted of a kitchen and a bedroom with a table. The only luxury he indulged in was wine. After his death, probably as a result of alcohol poisoning, his wine cellar was found filled with over 1,200 liters of Burgundy.

Pecquet was neither married nor had any children. Therefore, he bequeathed most of his fortune to his niece Hélène, his sister's daughter. The whereabouts of his scientific documents is not known.

Fonts

  • Experimenta Nova Anatomica. Paris 1651. (English translation, as New Anatomical Experiments, 1653)
  • De Circulatione Sanguinis et Chyli Motu. 1653.
  • De Thoracicis Lacteis. 1653.
  • Nouvelle découverte touchant la veüe , with Edme Mariotte, 1668.

literature

  • Sarah Janvier Lewis: Jean Pecquet (1622-1674) and the Thoracic duct . Thesis. Yale University, 2003, OCLC 701752903 .
  • Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Pecquet, Jean. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1119.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Science and social status: The members of the Académie des sciences 1666-1750, p. 119, digitized
  2. Handbook of normal and pathological physiology: 7th volume, p. 72, digitized
  3. Connais-toi toi-même: notions de physiologie à l'usage de la jeunesse et des gens du monde , p. 148 ff.
  4. Connais-toi toi-même: notions de physiologie à l'usage de la jeunesse et des gens du monde digitized p. 141
  5. Histoire littéraire du règne de Louis XIV. Vol. 2, p. 201
  6. Enzyclopédie méthodique medicine , p. 591.
  7. a b Ralf Bröer: Jean Pecquet , in: Wolfgang U. Eckart and Christoph Gradmann (eds.): Ärztelexikon. From antiquity to the 20th century , 3rd edition 2006 Springer Verlag Heidelberg, Berlin, New York pp. 256–257. Medical glossary 2006 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-29585-3 .
  8. ^ Science and social status: The members of the Académie des sciences 1666–1750, p. 121, digitized
  9. Nouvelle découverte touchant la veüe
  10. Comparative appraisal of the merits of J. Th. Desagulier, by Wilhelm Mair, p. 10 digitized
  11. ^ Science and social status: The members of the Académie des sciences 1666-1750, p. 122, digitized
  12. Science and social status: The members of the Académie des sciences 1666-1750, p. 123, digitized