JEAN ASTRUC (1684-1766), French physician and Biblical critic, was born on the 19th of March 1684 at Sauve, in Languedoc.
He graduated. in medicine at Montpellier in 1703, and in 1710 he was appointed to the chair of anatomy at Toulouse, which he retained till 1717, when he became professor of medicine at Montpellier. Subsequently he was appointed successively superintendent of the mineral waters of Languedoc (1721), first physician to the king of Poland (1729), and regius professor of medicine at Paris (1731). He died on the 5th of May 1766 at Paris. Of his numerous works, that on which his fame principally rests is the treatise entitled De Morbis Venereis libri sex, 1736. In addition to other medical works he published anonymously Conjectures sur les memoires originaux dont it parait que Moyse s'est servi pour composer le livre de la Genese, (1753), in which he pointed out that two main sources can be traced in the book of Genesis; and two dissertations on the immateriality and immortality of the soul,. 1755.
See Hauck, Realencyk. f. Prot. Theol., 1897, vol. ii. pp. 162-170.