Jean-Joseph Menuret

Jean-Joseph Menuret, called Menuret de Chambaud (23 January 1739 – 15 December 1815) was a French physician and author of a number of medical treatises.He also contributed to the Encyclopédie by Diderot and d'Alembert.

Biography

Menuret studied medicine at the University of Montpellier with Antoine Fizes, whose opinions he perhaps too exclusively adopted. Returned to practise in Montelimar after he obtained his doctorate, his early works, which were successful, and a fairly large number of articles supplied by him to the Encyclopedia by Diderot, although full of paradoxical ideas, but written with a pure and correct style, made him noticed and especially put him in great relationships with the Encyclopedists. He was amonf the number of writers of this great work, producing nearly eighty articles on medicine.

Since staying in a small provincial town could not long be suitable for this active man, industrious, highly educated and gifted with great imagination, this circumstance enabled him to leave Montelimar and try his fortune in Paris, where the many friends he had made did not abandon him. With their protection, he first became physician of the king's stables and doctor of the Countess of Artois.

The events of the Revolution came to disturb his rest and forced him to emigrate. He settled in Hamburg. Returning to France after the Coup of 18 Brumaire, he settled in Paris where several learned societies hastened to admit him within their ranks. "Those who knew him particularly ensure that when called in the sumptuous palaces of princes and in the humble asylum of the poor, he devoted to them his first visit. Grown a septuagenarian, he still enjoyed good health; However, one of his colleagues, seeing him sader than usual, asked him if he felt some discomfort, indisposition: No, my friend replied Menuret; thank Heaven, I am pretty well, but I have a sorrow, old age takes away my sweetest enjoyment: I can no longer climb to the sixth floor".

Family

Menuret's first marriage with Louise Cartier de Bois Martin from Valence remained childless. As Louise died in 1773, Menuret married Marie-Elisabeth Monneron (born 1745), daughter of Antoine Claude Monneron (1703–1791), a tax farmer of Annonay, Ardèche and Augustin Monneron's sister. This marriage gave one son, André Menuret – who remained single – and two daughters, Joséphine Menuret and Alexandre Menuret.

Works

• 1767: Nouveau traité du pouls, Amsterdam (Paris), in-12°
• 1770: Avis aux mères sur la petite vérole et la rougeole, ou Lettres à madame de *** sur la manière de traiter et de gouverner ses enfants dans ces maladies ; suivies d’une question proposée à Messieurs de la Société royale des sciences de Montpellier, relativement à l’inoculation, Lyon, in-8°
• 1777: Éloge historique de M. Venel, médecin, Grenoble, in-8°
• 1781: Essai sur l’action de l’air dans les maladies contagieuses, qui a remporté le prix proposé par la Société royale de Médecine, Paris : rue et hôtel Serpente, in-12°, XXIV-112 p. ; translated into German (Leipzig, 1784, in-8°)
• 1786: Essai sur l’histoire médico-topographique de Paris, Paris, in-12 ; New edition, augmentée de quelques lettres sur différents sujets, Paris, 1804 in-8°
• 1790 or 1791: Mémoire sur la culture des jachères [couronné par la Société d’agriculture de Paris en 1789], Paris : Impr. de Ph.-D. Pierres, et chez Belin, in-8°, 61 p.
• 1790: Observations sur le débit du sel après la suppression de la gabelle, relatives à la santé et à l’intérêt des citoyens, in-8°
• 1791: Essai sur les moyens de former de bons médecins, sur les obligations réciproques des médecins et de la société; partie d’un projet d’éducation national relative à cette profession, Paris, in-8° ; édition revue et augmentée de quelques notes relatives aux changements survenus dans cette partie depuis la première, en 1791, Paris, 1814, in-8°
• 1797: Essai sur la ville de Hambourg, considérée dans ses rapports avec la santé, ou Lettres sur l’histoire médico-topographique de cette ville, Hambourg, in-8°
• 1809: Discours sur la réunion de l’utile à l’agréable, même en médecine ; lu à la séance publique de la Société philotechnique, Paris, in-8°

Articles in the Encyclopédie (selection)

• Articles Inflammation, Maladies inflammatoires, vol. 8, (p. 708–27) ;
• Article Mort (médecine) , vol. 10, (p. 718–27) ;
• Article Pouls, vol. 13, (p. 205–40) ;
• Article « Somnambule, & Somnambulisme », vol. 15,(p. 340–2).