Background

Etienne Geoffroy was born on February 13, 1672, in Paris, France. He was the son of Matthieu François Geoffroy, a wealthy pharmacist who had been a Paris alderman, and Louise de Vaux, daughter of a well-known surgeon.

Education

His father, the fourth in a respected dynasty of pharmacists, hoping that Geoffroy would eventually take over the family business, sent him to Montpellier in 1692 for a year to learn pharmacy from a colleague, Pierre Sanche, whose son came to Paris. While in Montpellier, Geoffroy attended courses at the medical school. Although he qualified as a pharmacist in 1694 after his return to Paris, his real ambition was to become a physician. With his father’s consent, he, therefore, turned to the study of medicine. He eventually received the Doctor of Medicine at the College de France in 1704.

Career

Geoffroy began to practice medicine a few years later after receiving his degree. He acquired a considerable reputation and was often consulted by other physicians.

Geoffroy succeeded J. P. de Tournefort as professor of medicine at the Collège Royal (now the Collége de France) in 1709 and retained the chair until his death. But his lecturing career had begun in 1707, when he first deputized for G-C. Fagan, professor of chemistry at the Jardin du Roi. Geoffroy normally lectured on materia medica for two or three hours immediately after his two-hour lecture on chemistry.

In 1726 Geoffroy was elected dean of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, and after the customary two-year period he was reelected, serving until 1729, at a time when there was a serious dispute between the physicians and surgeons. The strains of this office, together with his chairs and his practice, weakened his health. He retired from the Jardin du Roi in 1730.

A new Paris pharmacopoeia, Codex medicamentarius seu pharmacopoeia parisiensis, was published by the Faculty of Medicine in 1732 under the deanship of H. T. Baron. Largely the work of Geoffroy, it contained many chemical remedies in addition to the traditional galenicals, as did Geoffroy’s unfinished book on materia medica, based on his lectures. The part that he had dictated, containing medicaments from the mineral kingdom and part of the vegetable kingdom, was published in Latin as Tractatus de materia medica in 1741 and was translated into French in 1743.

It was well known before Geoffroy’s time that certain substances could displace others from compounds. But in 1718 he advanced the first general proposition that if two substances in combination are approached by a third with which one of them has a greater relation, then that one will combine with the third, leaving the other free. He accompanied this with a sixteen-column table in which, using symbols, he showed the order of displacement of some common substances. The first column referred to compounds of mineral acids, with which fixed alkali (soda and potash were not yet distinguished) had the greatest relation, followed by volatile alkali, absorbent earth, and metals. Since the order in which the metals displaced each other was not the same for all acids, the next three columns were devoted to the individual acids and their reactions with metals. There followed columns for absorbent earth, fixed alkali, volatile alkali, metals in combination with acids, and common sulfur. And then six columns for the “compounds” of the metals with each other and one for water in relation to salt and alcohol. No details were given by Geoffray of the experiments on which his table was based and in 1720 he had to reply to some criticisms.

Achievements

• Étienne Geoffroy was an eminent chemist of his time. He is best known in connexion with his tables of affinities, which retained their vogue for the rest of the century, until displaced by the profounder conceptions introduced by C. L. Berthollet. His most celebrated work is Tractalus de materia medica, published posthumously in 1741.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Suite De La Matière Medicale

    (Volume 2)

    1756
  • Suite De La Matière Medicale

    (Volume 6)

    1757
  • Suite De La Matière Medicale

    (Volume 1)

    1756
  • Suite De La Matière Medicale

    (Volume 5)

    1757
  • Suite De La Matière Medicale

    (Volume 3)

    1756
  • Histoire Abrégée Des Insectes Qui Se Trouvent Aux Environs De Paris 1762
  • Tractatus De Materia Medica: De Vegetalibus Indigenis 1741

Views

Geoffroy found iron in the ashes of all vegetable matter, although it was not detectable in the original plant: he believed that the iron had been formed during these processes, a “sulfurous principle” being common to vegetable matter and metals and giving metals their properties of fusibility and ductility.

Geoffroy also considered that the acid in urine was converted into alkali. He believed that alkali could be formed from mineral acids. He explained these changes as well as the formation of iron from vegetable matter, by a theory which was elaborated in his Materia medica but is also mentioned in some of his earlier publications.

Membership

Geoffroy was elected to the Academie des Sciences in 1699.

• 

  Academie des Sciences , France

  1699 - 1731

Connections

Father:

Matthieu François Geoffroy

Mother:

Louise de Vaux

Brother:

Claude Joseph Geoffroy

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography