author
Amédée Doppet
1753–1800
A doctor, soldier, and man of letters, this restless figure moved through the upheavals of the French Revolution with unusual range. His books span medicine, politics, memoir, and the strange borderlands of eighteenth-century science.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Chambéry on March 16, 1753, François Amédée Doppet was a Savoyard physician, writer, and military officer whose life crossed several worlds at once. After a short period in the cavalry, he studied medicine in Turin and later settled in Paris, where he wrote poetry, fiction, and medical works.
Doppet's career unfolded during the French Revolution, when he also became involved in politics and the army. He is remembered as a general of the Revolutionary era, but for readers he is especially interesting because his writing ranges so widely, from practical medical subjects to memoir and more speculative topics such as animal magnetism and occult medicine.
That mix of science, ambition, and curiosity gives his work a distinctly late-eighteenth-century flavor. He died at Aix-les-Bains on April 26, 1799, leaving behind a body of writing that reflects both the intellectual experimentation and the turbulence of his age.