Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 800

JEAN ASTRUC (1684-1766) De morbis venereis libri novem. Apud Guillelmum Cavelier 1740 Vol. I: [4] xl (misnumbered xxxvi) 536 [dxxxvii]-dcviii pp.; Vol. II: [4] 537-1196 pp. 25.4 cm.

Astruc, one of the most learned men of eighteenth-century France, was a scholar of the humanities as well as of almost every area of the medical sciences. He taught anatomy at Toulouse, was professor of medicine at Montpellier, and eventually occupied the chair of medicine at the Collège Royal de France in Paris. He is best known for this invaluable history of syphilis and venereal disease, which contains references to the writings of some six hundred authors and skillfully defends Astruc's contention that syphilis was introduced into Europe from America by the men returning with Columbus. The work was first published in 1736 and was translated into English the following year.

Cited references: Cushing A294 (1741 ed.); Garrison-Morton 5195 (1736 ed.); Osler 1851; Wellcome II, p. 65