Abstract
IN the second part1 of his paper on “Voltaire and Medicine,” read before the Section of the History of Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine on December 16, the president, Dr. J. D. Rolleston, gave some account of Voltaire's allusions to anatomy and physiology, his advocacy of inoculation against small-pox, and bis interest in the history and ravages of syphilis, a knowledge of which he had derived from Astruc's work on venereal diseases. He also referred to the attention paid by Voltaire to other matters connected with public health, his acquaintance with medical jurisprudence and particularly his sceptical attitude toward historical cases of poisoning, in many of which he showed that death was more probably due to some acute infection, and his remarks on various diseases of social importance, such as mental disorders, convulsive hysteria at the tombs of saints and ecclesiastics, alcoholism and the King's evil.
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Voltaire and Medicine. Nature 117, 214 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/117214a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/117214a0