Robert Weston - A Country Doctor in the French Revolution: Marie-François-Bernadin Ramel

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A Country Doctor in the French Revolution

This book will be of interest to those studying French medical and Revolutionary history. It traces the life of an early-modern rural French physician from childhood to death how he worked as a physician for six years in North Africa (taking a particular interest in medical meteorology); sought to establish himself as a savant in the Republic of Letters by publishing texts and prize-winning essays; and, despite his bourgeois roots, took part in the siege of Toulon, became committed to the ideals of the French Revolution, and volunteered for the Revolutionary arme dItalie, mainly working in military hospitals. It concludes with an account of his time practising medicine in southwest France, where he also engaged in local politics, eventually being appointed to a mayoral position by Bonaparte.

Robert Weston is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia.

First published 2020

by Routledge

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2020 Taylor & Francis

The right of Robert Weston to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this title has been requested

ISBN: 978-0-367-27189-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-29539-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by codeMantra

There are some apparent discrepancies in the archives over the dates attributed to events. I have recorded these as they appear in the records and, where significant, commented on the anomalies. Translations from French are my own. The orthography of eighteenth-century France was often different from that of today; when quoting material from that period the original orthography has been retained. The period covered by this study was one in which medicine was taught and practised based on theories which had been followed for centuries.

The input of many individuals is gratefully acknowledged. The archivists of Bibliothque de lAcademie Nationale de Mdicine, Paris; Bibliothque interuniversitair de sant, Paris; les archives municipal de La Ciotat; les archives municipal dAubagne; les archives de la Chambre de commerce et dindustrie de Marseille-Provence; Ministre de la Dfense, service historique de la dfense centre historique des archives, Vincennes; Professor Susan Broomhall for reading earlier versions of this text and whose suggestions have improved the work; the anonymous reviewers whose helpful criticisms have polished the whole; and my wife Jan for her patience whilst this project has seemed as though it would never be completed.

This book examines the life of an early-modern French physician, Marie-Franois-Bernadin Ramel le fils, who lived in the Marseille region. What makes this man of particular interest is the unusual pattern of his career, including working in North Africa, his activities during the French revolution, his responses to the subsequent social milieu, and his successes in contributing to the Republic of Medicine. There were thousands of doctors working in the smaller towns and villages in early-modern France, but few left a mark on the social and medical history of the period. It is unusual to find a rural physician such as Ramel to leave as remarkable a story as he did.

Structurally, I have largely worked chronologically through the life of Ramel. Needless to say, such an approach does not work perfectly. opens with an account of his return to civilian life, now in the Var town of La Ciotat. The final chapter considers Ramel by comparison with three other Midi physicians of the same era, Pierre-Joseph Amoreux (17411824), Esprit Claude Franois Calvet (17281810), and Michel Darluc (171783). The whole is summarized in the conclusions.

Biographies of famous French physicians and surgeons of the early-modern period are commonplace.

Marie-Franois-Bernadin Ramel le fils was, and remains, one such less prominent individual in the context of French physicians of the late eighteenth century. I drew upon his consultations in Medical Consulting by Letter in France, 16651789.

Brockliss and Jones have mentioned the casebook of physician Pellisier of St-Rmy-de-Provence [sic],

Laurence Brockliss has investigated the life of Avignon physician Esprit Claude Franois Calvet and Montpellier physician-turned naturalist Pierre-Joseph Amoreux. The similarities and differences between the lives of Ramel, Amoreux, Calvet, and Darluc are considered later.

What light does the biography and writings of Ramel throw on French medicine and society in the eighteenth century?

One aspect of Ramels work, which is given prominence, is his interest in the influence of weather on illness. The topic of medico-meteorology was extensively studied in the eighteenth century. Brockliss and Jones attribute the commencement of the interest in the effect of air on the body to Joseph Raulin (170884). He wrote:

I have always observed since I started to practise medicine, that one pays too little attention to the prompt and frequent variations of the air, and that one cannot look at enough as one of the principle causes of illness.

His argument was essentially developed from Hippocratic theory. In On Airs, Waters and Places, Hippocrates had contended:

Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly should proceed thus: in the first place to consider the seasons of the year, and what effects each of them produces for they are not at all alike, but differ much from themselves in regard to their changes. Then the winds, the hot and the cold, especially such as are common to all countries, and then such as are peculiar to each locality. We must also consider the qualities of the waters, for as they differ from one another in taste and weight, so also do they differ much in their qualities.

Thus, although the contribution of climate to human disease came to the fore in eighteenth-century Europe, it had ancient roots.

James Riley has also examined the literature around the relationship between the environment and ill-health. As far as France was concerned, she drew particular attention to the work of Jean Razoux, which is discussed in detail later.

Notes

Jean Astruc (16841766) in his memoires on the history of the Montpellier faculty of medicine gave details about significant doctors at Montpellier from 1080 to 1756. Jean Astruc, Mmoires pour servir lhistoire de la facult de mdecine de Montpellier, Paris, Chez P.J. Cavelier, 1767.

For example, Paul Joseph Barthez (17341806), Pierre Chirac (16481742), Charles Louis Dumas (17651813), Jean Fernel (150658), Antoine Fizes (16891765), Etienne-Franois Geoffroy (16721731), Antoine Louis (172392), Henri-Franois Le Dran (16851770), Louis-Jean Le Thieullier (d. 1751).

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