Sauvages

François Boissier de Sauvages de Lacroix

François Boissier de Sauvages de Lacroix

François Boissier de Sauvages de Lacroix (May 12, 1706 – February 19, 1767) was a French physician and botanist who was a native of Alès. He studied medicine and botany at the University of Montpellier, and received his doctorate in 1726. After spending a few years in Paris, he returned to Montpellier in 1734, where became conservator of the botanical gardens. He was the brother of botanist Pierre-Augustin Boissier de Sauvages (1710–1795).

At the Botanical Gardens in Montpellier, Sauvages de Lacroix made several improvements to the facility, including installation of a heated greenhouse. He was a good friend to famed Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné (1707–1778), to whom Sauvages de Lacroix sent botanical specimens from southern France for study and classification. Linné designated the genus Sauvagesia from the family of Ochnaceae in honor of his French colleague, and in 1748 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which Linné had been a co-founder of.

As a physician, Sauvages de Lacroix is credited with establishing the first methodical nosology for diseases. His classification was based on the framework created by Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689), and was in accordance with the methodology used by botanists. His classification system listed 10 major classes of disease, which were further broken down into 44 orders, 315 genera, and 2400 species (individual diseases). This system is explained in his 1763 treatise Nosologia Methodica, which was an inspiration to Philippe Pinel (1745–1826) and his early work with mental illnesses.

[edit] References

• This article is based on a translation of an article from the French Wikipedia.

• The standard author abbreviation Sauvages is applied to species he described.