A celebrated physician, physiologist, and Encyclopædist, born at Montpellier, where he founded a medical school; suffered greatly during the Revolution; was much esteemed and honoured by Napoleon; is celebrated among physiologists as the advocate of what he called the Vital Principle as a physiological force in the functions of the human organism; his work "Nouveaux Eléments de la Science de l'Homme" has been translated into all the languages of Europe (1734-1806).