Société royale de médecine
The Société royale de médecine ( Royal Medical Society ) was a French medical society that was founded in 1778 and dissolved with the French Revolution in 1793.
It emerged in 1778 from the merger of the Parisian Commission for Medicine, founded in 1776 ( Commission de médecine à Paris pour tenir une correspondance avec les médecins de province pour tout ce qui peut être relatif aux maladies épidémiques et épizootiques ), which is involved in combating epidemics in humans and animal should work with the doctors in the provinces, and a commission for medicines and safe drinking water ( Commission pour l'examen des remèdes secrets et des eaux minérales ). The driving forces behind the founding were the royal personal physician Joseph-Marie-François de Lassone and the comparative anatomist and personal physician of Marie Antoinette Félix Vicq d'Azyr , who break up the encrusted structures of the medical system in Paris with a new dynamic society oriented towards scientific progress wanted to.
The association had royal privilege and the first president was Lassone, followed by Joseph Lieutaud , the secretary was Vicq d'Azyr. She was supported by enlightened politicians such as Jacques Necker , Charles Gravier de Vergennes and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot . Members were also the deans of the Sorbonne Medical Faculty and many of the 30 members were professors at the Sorbonne. There were also associated members such as Necker and Vergennes and corresponding members in the provinces and colonies and abroad (so Benjamin Franklin ).
They made particular efforts to clarify the causes and fight epidemics. In doing so, they also followed the explanation of climatic conditions , which goes back to Hippocrates of Kos , and examined the connection between climatic conditions and diseases. Much data was collected, but no conclusive result was obtained. In addition, medicines (remèdes secrets), mostly mixed according to secret recipes in pharmacies and previously not subject to any regulation, and drinking water were examined. One of the members was Antoine de Lavoisier .
From 1776 to 1779, treatises by its members appeared in the series Histoire et mémoires de la Société royale de Médecine .
Like the other scientific societies, it was dissolved in the reign of terror in 1793.
literature
- C. Hannaway: The Société Royale de médecine and Epidemics in the Ancien Régime, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, No. 46, 1972, p. 257