Divers auteurs - Mémoires de Médecine - 1807-1809

Interested, a two-volume set of 41 medical theses defended and published at the University of Montpellier between 1806 and 1810 by future pharmacists and physicians from all over France.

778pp. + VIII (manuscript table of contents)
646pp. + IX (the same)

Galleries of verse on some pages of the first volume and on some pages of the second.

A fascinating reflection of the medical preoccupations of the era, in which the political context of the First Empire sometimes shines through. At times, fiery passages in a florid language.

The works treat, for example, venereal diseases, rabies, childbirth, the influence of climate and environment on health, and malaria. Also a dissertation on yellow fever in the Antilles by a certain J.B. Repey, from the island of Guadeloupe. A few theses concern hysteria and hypochondriacal conditions.

Modern medical knowledge, seen from today’s perspective, can evoke a comic sense in the reader, tempered by the serious concerns of that time about infant mortality and mortality of women in childbirth.