Education, Surgery and Medicine
Franςois Quesnay was born into a family of well-to-do ploughmen in the little parish of Mere (near Versailles) on 4 June 1694. The story goes that he only began reading and writing at the age of 11 but that he then went on to study Latin and Greek by himself.
What is sure is that after his father’s death in 1707 he became the pupil of a surgeon named Jean de la Vigne. With a view to finding a more lucrative profession, Quesnay started an apprenticeship (1711-16) with the engraver Pierre de Rochefort in Paris. He also registered for courses at the Faculty of Medicine and the famous College of Surgery of Saint-Come. He abandoned engraving and received his letters as a Master in Surgery on 9 August 1718. He had married Jeanne-Catherine Dauphin, the daughter of a minor craftsman from Paris, on 30 January 1717 and they settled down in the city of Mantes to the west of Paris where Quesnay set up as a surgeon. His skill enabled him to become a respected practitioner and he was involved in the controversy on blood-letting with the physician Jean-Baptiste Silva. In 1734 Quesnay became personal surgeon to the Duke of Villeroy and left Mantes for Paris. While under the patronage of Villeroy, Quesnay was also being looked after by Franςois Gigot de La Peyronie, first surgeon to the King, who introduced Quesnay into the Surgeon’s College and established him as the secretary of the new Academie de Chirurgie in 1740. During this period, Quesnay concentrated his efforts on the profession of surgeon producing notably the Essai physique sur Γwconomie animale and the Art de guerir par la saignee, both in 1736, and the Memoires de l’Academie de chirurgie (1743) which he not only edited but drafted almost singlehandedly. During the War of Austrian Succession he accompanied the duke of Villeroy to Metz where he had the opportunity to be awarded the title of physician in the Faculty of Pont-a-Mousson (1744). Recommended to the Marquise of Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, Quesnay became her personal doctor in 1749. Alone - his wife having died in 1728 - he settled in Versailles in his famous small entresol. Having treated the Dauphin for smallpox in 1752 he was rewarded with lettres de noblesse and thus able to buy the domain of Beauvoir for his son Blaise-Guillaume. He published his last works on surgery and medicine - Traite de la suppuration and Traite de la gangrene - in 1749, Traite des effets et usages de la saignee in 1750 and, finally, in 1751 the Traite des fievres continues. D’Alembert secured his election to the Academie des sciences in 1751 and he was elected to the Royal Society the year after.
More on the topic Education, Surgery and Medicine:
- Faccarello G., Kurz H.D.(eds.). Handbook on the History of Economic Analysis, Volume 1: Great Economists Since Petty and Boisguilbert. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar,2016. — 813 p., 2016
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