author
Antoine Poissonnier-Desperrières
1722–1793
An eighteenth-century French physician of the navy and colonies, he wrote practical, ambitious works on sailors’ health, tropical fevers, and diet at sea. His books capture a moment when medicine, empire, and everyday survival were tightly bound together.
1 Audiobook
Mémoire sur les avantages qu'il y auroit à changer absolument la nourriture des gens de mer
by Antoine Poissonnier-Desperrières, chevalier de La Coudraye
About the author
Born in 1722 and active in France’s medical world during the later eighteenth century, Antoine Poissonnier-Desperrières is remembered as a physician and medical writer whose work focused on naval and colonial health. Library and catalog records link him to major studies of sailors’ illnesses and to medical writing on Saint-Domingue, showing how closely his career was tied to the needs of the French navy and overseas empire.
His best-known works include Traité des maladies des gens de mer (1767; expanded edition 1780) and Traité des fièvres de l'isle de St.-Domingue (1780). These books deal with the harsh realities of life at sea and in the Caribbean, from epidemic disease to the effects of food and climate on the body. One of his most striking themes was diet: he argued for changing sailors’ rations in order to improve health and fight scurvy.
Some surviving editions describe him with a long list of official roles, including physician to the king and an inspector connected with naval and colonial hospitals. Even where biographical details are sparse, his writing shows a doctor trying to turn observation into policy. For modern readers, his work offers both medical history and a vivid glimpse of how eighteenth-century France tried to manage disease across ships, ports, and colonies.