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Occupation PhysicianEncyclopédiste Spouse(s) Louise Cartier de BoismartinMarie-Elisabeth Monneron Died 15 December 1815, Paris, France |
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.
Contents
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.