Bouvenot (1710-1796)

Case-book in French and Latin of a Physician extending over a period of more than sixty years of practice: including notes and extracts, and a number of medical receipts. The earliest dated entry is 1728 found on the 15th unpaginated leaf: the latest is 1796 on p. 239. There are some entries by different hands, including one on pp. 364-366 dated 'Floréal. An X' (1802).

1728-1796

1 volume 407 pp. + 42 ll. last 2 bl.. folio. 33 x 201/2 cm. Original vellum binding damaged.

Purchased 1919.

From various passages in the text the author appears to have lived at Arbois (p. 150), and to have practised at Besançon, and many of his patients lived there. It is possible that he was the father of Pierre Bouvenot [1748-1833], a politician, and of Louis Pierre Bouvenot [1756-1830], priest and later a physician in 1802: both were born at Arbois.

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).

This MS. is assigned to Bouvenot on the basis of the statement on p. 66, where the compiler speaks of 'Patruelis meus Renobert Bouvenot' whom he treated in 1736 for spermatorrhoea. According to the entry in Lewis & Short's Latin Dictionary, 1951, the primary meaning of 'Patruelis' is 'Son of a Father's brother'. His name has not been found in the main text, but on p. 170 under the date 8 December 1750 he says 'quadragesimum ago annum'. He also seems to have had a brother who was a surgeon, as on p. 116 he speaks of a dissection of a child of a M. de Preville 'dissecuit frater meus'.

From the Debacq Collection.