Moyse Charas

Moyse Charas 1619-1698

Moyse Charas , also Moïse Charas (born April 2, 1619 in Uzès , † January 17, 1698 in Paris ) was a French pharmacist and doctor.

Live and act

Orange - Paris

Moyse Chara's biography was largely shaped by his membership of the French Protestant community . In 1598 the Edict of Nantes had granted French Protestants religious tolerance and extensive civil rights. These concessions were partially revoked in the " Edict of Grace" of Alès in 1629 and in full in the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685 .

In 1619 Charas was born in Uzès and baptized Protestant. A little later, his family moved to Orange , where in 1621 his father and his brother-in-law opened a fabric trade. In 1636 Moyse Charas was apprenticed to the pharmacist Jean Deidier in Orange for two years . His apprenticeship was followed by years of traveling, which enabled him to expand his knowledge and experience in Marseille , Montpellier and Lyon . After the wandering years, he joined his master’s business in Orange in 1641, before starting his own business there in 1644. In 1645 he received the title of “master pharmacist” from the Prince of Orange . From 1650 to 1654 he was a city councilor (“conseillier du magistrat”) in Orange.

At the end of 1659 Charas moved to Paris , where he opened a pharmacy. He worked as the syndic of the royal pharmacists until 1681 and after 1672, succeeding Christophe Glaser, as a chemistry demonstrator in the "Jardin royal des plantes médicinales".

But the political developments in Orange continued to influence the life of Charas. 1650 was Wilhelm III. of Orange , the governor of Orange , born eight days after the untimely death of his father . The French king used the resulting power vacuum to occupy the principality in 1660 . There followed four years of negotiations with the French crown, in which the interests of the Principality of Orange through Constantijn Huygens , the secretary of Prince Wilhelm III. as well as by Friedrich von Dohna , the governor of Orange. Charas provided courier services in the negotiations for both Huygens and von Droha until the Principality of Orange was solemnly restored in 1665.

Theriac

Charas had taken part in the preparation of the theriac during his traveling years in Marseille, Montpellier and Lyon. In Orange he had performed this ceremony twice in his pharmacy. At the beginning of 1667 he received permission from the lieutenant general of the Paris police de la Reynie to carry out this ceremony in his Paris pharmacy. For this purpose, the required ingredients were displayed in the pharmacy's rooms, examined by pharmacists and doctors, officially approved and finally processed into 300 livres of theriac.

Following the example of the Paracelsist Johann Zwelfer , who had criticized the Augsburg Pharmacopoeia , Charas dared to criticize the traditional regulations for the preparation of Theria without fundamentally questioning these regulations. In 1668 he published his proposed changes and criticized in particular the preparation process for the Theriak ingredient viper meat . This led to a controversy with Francesco Redi , which also included Pierre Bourdelot and Felice Fontana .

Charas made a viper salt that sold well in Holland as a panacea, so he had difficulty getting enough vipers. He preferred vipers from the Lyon region and from the Poitiers region . In 1676 he published his main work in Paris, the pharmacopoeia Pharmacopoe royale galénique et chymique, which received numerous new editions and expansions until the 1750s.

London - The Hague

At the end of 1679 Charas was invited to London to assist five doctors in treating the king 's fever . In June 1680 the king was healed and the therapists were paid off. The doctors and the pharmacist received their wages. The doctors 104 livres each , the pharmacist 54 livres. In June 1681, Charas was promoted to Doctor of Medicine in Orange after an examination by the local doctors and after successfully defending a thesis. In December 1681 he was given permission to settle freely in England . In May 1682 he took the citizenship oath in Amsterdam , but soon moved to The Hague .

Spain

At the end of November 1684, he embarked with his son François in Ostend , went to Cádiz and stayed in Spain for five years . At first he stayed in Madrid for two and a half years , where he lived in the embassy of the Dutch States General and treated people of lower rank.

In May 1687 the Inquisition declared him a persona non grata and issued a one-month deportation order against him, which was withdrawn after the energetic objection of the extraordinary envoy of the Dutch States General Pieter Battier. Nevertheless, Charas left Madrid in August 1687. With a passport valid for three months, he went to the Galician A Coruña . While he was waiting here for a ship that could take him to Holland, he worked as a doctor and was so successful that he was tempted to practice all over Galicia with official permission and to postpone the return trip to Holland.

In September 1688 he was ambushed in Lugo , chained in a church prison, isolated from the royal judiciary and finally transported to the headquarters of the Inquisition in Santiago de Compostela on October 15, 1688 . The son François remained free and lived with a former patient of his father. The Inquisition examined Chara's apartment and asked his patients about Chara's therapeutic methods. In a grueling process, absurd accusations were made and attempts were made to press him into confessions under threat of torture . He decided to formally convert . After converting to Catholicism, he was acquitted with exquisite courtesy on February 25, 1689 .

Since he was penniless, he used his reputation as a doctor and practiced in Spain for a few more months. On August 14, 1689 he left the country via A Coruña and reached Ostend on August 31, 1689. At that time his wife was still in England, from where she had fought for his release from the Inquisition's custody. After five years of separation, the family was reunited in Amsterdam in September 1689.

Paris

In 1685, the Edict of Fontainebleau forced French Protestants either to convert or to leave the country. The Protestant Netherlands offered themselves as exile for those who refused to convert. There is evidence that Charas was reviled by French Protestants in the Netherlands. This is suggested by the contents of a letter that the Leyden professor of medicine Charles Drelincourt wrote to the Rotterdam philosopher Pierre Bayle in January 1685 . Both Drelincourt and Bayle were French Protestants.

Charas settled again in Paris , where he confirmed his conversion to Catholicism on July 1, 1691. Shortly afterwards he was allowed to pay homage to the king and he was then accepted into the Académie des Sciences .

Works

• Histoire naturelle des animaux, des plantes, & des minéraux qui entrent dans la composition de la Thériaque d'Andromachus, dispensée et achevée publiquement à Paris, par Moyse Charas, l'un des Apoticaires de Monsieur le Duc d'Orléans Frère unique du Roy . Avec les reformations & les observations de l'auteur, tant sur l'élection, et sur la preparation, que sur le dernier mélange de tous les ingrédients de cette composition . Olivier de Varennes, Paris 1668 (digitized version) . - Thériaque d'Andromacus, avec une description particulière des plantes, des animaux & des minéraux employées à cette composition, et les reformations & observations nécessaires, tant sur leur élection & preparation, que sur leur dernier mélange. … Nouvelle édition, review & augmentée . Laurent d'Houry, Paris 1685 (digitized)
• Nouvelles expériences sur la vipère, ou l'on verra une description exacte de toutes se parties, la source de son venin, ses divers effets, & les remèdes exquis que les artistes peuvent tirer de la Vipère, tant pour la guérison de ses morsures, que pour cells de plusieurs autres maladies . Olivier de Varennes, Paris 1669 (digitized version) . - Nouvelles expériences sur la Vipère, ou l'on verra une description exacte de toutes se parties, la source de son venin, ses divers effets, & les remèdes exquis que les artistes peuvent tirer du corps de cet animal. Avec une suite des nouvelles expériences sur la vipère, et une dissertation sur son venin, pour servir des réplique à une lettre que Monsieur François Redi Gentil-homme d'Arezzo a écrite à Messieurs Bourdelot & [Alexander] Morus [1616–1670], imprimée à Florence en l'année 1670 . Paris 1672 (digitized version) 2nd improved edition. Laurent Houry, Paris 1694 (digitized)
  • New experiments upon Vipers. With exquisite remedies, that may be drawn from them, as well for the cure of their bitings, as for that of other maladies. Also a letter of Francesco Redi, concerning some objections made upon his observations about Vipers: written to Monsieur Bourdelot and Mr. More. Together with the sequal of new Experiments upon Vipers, in a Reply to a letter written by Sign. Fredi . J. Martyn, London 1673 (digitized version)
  • Historia naturalis Theriacae Andromachi or description of the animals, plants and minerals which are described / taken from the composition of the Theriacae by Andromacho. In addition to the endorsements and comments of the author, as well as the recommendation and preparation / as well as the latter mixing of all ingredients of this great composition . Beyer, Frankfurt am Mayn 1679 (digitized) .
  • Newly experienced samples of the viper / dabey to see a proper description of all of her limbs / the origin of her poison / the different chafing of the same and the most exquisite artzney / which the art experts outside of the viper / as well as to cure the same bites / as well as many other diseases can bring . Joh.Beyers Erben, Frankfurt am Mayn 1679 (digitized version)
• Manuscript ( autograph ) with recipes (c. 1675) . Wellcome Library MS 1519 (digitized version)
• Pharmacopoe royale galénique et chymique. Paris 1676 (digitized version) , 3rd edition 1681 (digitized version) . - Pharmacopoea Regia Galenica et Chimica, Gallice ab authore conscripta, jam vero Latinate donata. Johann Ludwig Dufour, Geneva 1683, Volume I (digitized) , Volume II (digitized) , Bruyset, Lyon 1753 Volume I (digitized) , Volume II (digitized)

literature

• Antoine Nicolas Condorcet . Éloges des Académiciens de l'Académie Royale Des Sciences morts depuis l'an 1666 jusqu'en 1790 . Vietweg and Fuchs, Braunschweig and Paris 1799, Vol. I, pp. 160–166 (digitized version )
• Dictionnaire des sciences médicales. Biography médicale . Volume 3, Panckoucke, Paris 1821, pp. 219–220 (digitized version )
• Ernst Julius Gurlt and August Hirsch . Biographical lexicon of the outstanding doctors of all times and peoples. Volume I, Urban & Schwarzenberg, Vienna and Leipzig 1884, p. 703 (digitized version)
• Paul Dorveaux. Apothicaires membres de l'Académie Royale des Sciences. II. Moyse Charas . In: Bulletin de la Société d'Histoire de la Pharmacie , 1929, No 65, pp. 329–340 (digitized version ) and No. 66, p. 377–390 (digitized version )
• M. Bouvet. Les grandes familles pharmaceutiques. Les Charas . In: Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie , 1949, No 124, pp. 453–463 (digitized version )
• Christian Warolin. Le testament authetique de Moyse Charas . In: Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie , 1998, No 320, pp. 435–438 (digitized version )
• Fred W. Felix. Moyse Charas, maître apothicaire et docteur en médecine . In: Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie , 2002, No 333, pp. 63–80 (digitized version )

Web links

Commons : Moyse Charas  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Works by and about Moyse Charas  in the German Digital Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Moyse Charas: Histoire naturelle des animaux… 1668, Préface.
2. ↑ Fred W. Felix. Moyse Charas, maître apothicaire et docteur en médecine . In: Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie , 2002, No 333, pp. 64-68
3. ^ Johann Zwelfer. Animadversiones in Pharmacopeia Augustana et annexam ejus mantissam. Endter, Nuremberg 1657 (digitized version)
4. ↑ Moyse Charas. Histoire naturelle des animaux, des plantes, & des minéraux qui entrent dans la composition de la Thériaque d'Andromachus… Paris 1668, pp. 29–56 (digitized version )
5. ↑ Francesco Redi. Osservazioni intorno alle vipere . Florence 1664 (digitized) . - Observationes de viperis… ex italiaca in latinam translatae . S. l., Approx. 1670 (digitized version)
6. ↑ Pierre Bourdelot. Recherches et observations sur les vipères, faites par Mr. Bourdelot, répondant à une lettre qu'il a reçue de Mr. Redi, premier Médecin du Grand Duc de Florence. Claude Barbin, Paris 1671 (digitized version)
7. ↑ Felice Fontana. Ricerche fisiche sopra il veleno della vipera. Con alcune osservazioni sopra le anguillette del grano sperone . Jacopo Giusti, Lucca 1767 (digitized version) . - Felix Fontana personal physician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany and supervisor of his natural history cabinet, treatise on the viper venom, the American poisons, the cherry laurel poison and some other plant poisons: together with some observations on the original structure of the animal body, on the regeneration of the nerves and the description of a new one Eye canal. First and second volume. With lots of coppers . Himburg, Berlin 1787 (digitized version)
8. ↑ Lynn Thorndike . A History of Magic and Experimental Science. Volume VIII, Columbia University Press, New York 1958, pp. 20-33
9. ↑ Moyse Charas: Histoire naturelle des animaux ... , 1668, p. 42 (digitized version)
10. ↑ After: Fred W. Felix. Moyse Charas, maître apothicaire et docteur en médecine . In: Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie , 2002, No 333, p. 69
11. ↑ Fred W. Felix. Moyse Charas, maître apothicaire et docteur en médecine . In: Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie , 2002, No 333, pp. 69-71
12. ↑ Émile Gigas. Choix de la correspondence inédite de Pierre Bayle… Copenhagen and Paris 1890, p. 236, letter of January 18, 1685 (digitized)
13. ↑ Claude Viel and Christian Warolin. Paul Dorveaux (July 21, 1851 - January 5, 1938), bibliothécaire de l'École supérieure de pharmacie de Paris et confondateur de la Société d'histoire de la pharmacie . In: Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie , 2003, No 340, pp. 551-568 (digitized version )