Background
Lorry was born on October 10, 1726, in Crosne, France, the son of a well-known professor of law in Paris.
1784
Anne-Charles Lorry, aged 51. An engraving by Augustin de Saint-Aubin (1784), after Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1777).
(French Edition)
French Edition
https://www.amazon.com/Lusage-Alimens-Commentaire-Di%C3%A9t%C3%A9tiques-Dhippocrate/dp/117305121X/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=Anne-Charles+Lorry&qid=1594882628&sr=8-4
1757
(French Edition)
French Edition
https://www.amazon.com/Anne-Charles-Lorry/dp/1274262658/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Anne-Charles+Lorry&qid=1594882628&sr=8-1
1765
Lorry was born on October 10, 1726, in Crosne, France, the son of a well-known professor of law in Paris.
Lorry received an excellent education supervised by Charles Rollin. He received his medical degree in 1748.
Lorry was presented by the chief royal physician L.G. Le Monnier, to Marshal Noailles. He was thus introduced to Paris high society and became the physician of the Richelieus of the Fronsaes of Mlle de Lespinasse, and of Voltaire, all of whom received him warmly but paid him less enthusiastically. He attended the autopsy of the young duke of Burgundy, the dauphin’s son, in 1761, and was called in as a consultant on 29 April 1774, during Louis XV’s last illness, at the request of the Due d’Aiguillon, the friend of the Comtesse du Barry. The king (who died on 10 May) spoke to Lorry several times and his baptismal name was, one evening, the password given to the captain of the guards.
Lorry’s worldly successes were numerous. He was consequently taken to task by La Mettrie in his Politique du medecin de Machiavel and was a character in a play by Poinsinet.
In 1753, Lorry left the Paris Faculty of Medicine, where he taught surgery, and was one of the founders of the Société Royale de Médecine, of which he became the director and vice-president. It was for his efforts in this capacity that Vicq-d'Azyr dedicated to him one of his best memorial addresses.
A serious stroke, around 1782, caused him to lose the use of his legs; and many of his patients turned to other physicians. He fell into financial difficulties, but obtained a royal pension that enabled him to go to Bourbonne-les-Bains, where he died.
(French Edition)
1765(French Edition)
1757Lorry’s worldly concerns did not prevent him from studying with Astruc and Ferrein, nor from doing important scientific work. In 1760 he presented two memoirs to the Académic Royale des Sciences on the then fashionable subject of medullo-cerebral physiology. In the first, he studied the normal movements of the encephalon, while in the second he established that compression of the cerebellum produces sleep and that a puncture in the upper part of the spinal cord between the second and third cervical vertebrae is immediately followed by death. It was thus that he placed in the spinal column the seat of the soul - the sensorium commune - the location of which had already been discussed by Vieussens, Boerhaave, Astruc, Franois de La Peyronie, Haller, and Antoine Louis, and later by Soemmerring.
Lorry’s treatise on dermatology, which he dedicated to his friend E. L. Geoffroy, was the first French monograph devoted to diseases of the skin and, according to L. T. Morton, the first modern work that attempted to classify them according to their physiological, pathological, and etiological similarities. He divided skin diseases into two groups. The first consisted of those he considered to be the external expression of an internal disease; these were the general or dépuratoaires diseases, which can either invade the entire cutaneous surface or be localized. The second group consists of diseases that originate in the skin itself and do not affect other parts of the body. They can - like those of the first group - cover either small areas or the general surface of the skin. Lorry’s book is a source of precise observations, but it is spoiled by an obsolete Galeno-Arabic nomenclature and archaic medical conceptions.
Lorry recognized two types of melancholy, one a consequence of an alteration of the solid parts, the other originating in the humors. The latter could result in hysteria in women and, in men, hypochondria. Lorry stressed spasmodic episodes: torticollis, pyloric spasm with vomiting, pharyngeal spasm with difficulties in swallowing. Although he assigned a physical etiology to melancholy. Lorry sometimes contradicted himself by citing the roles of fear and anguish.
According to Paul Delaunay, the elegant Lorry was the darling of the salons and of the ladies. He was extravagant with money and unconcerned about his health; thus he became gouty.
Nothing is known of Lorry's family.
