Charles-Augustin Vandermonde (18 June 1727 – 28 May 1762) was a French physician, writer and editor.

Life

His father, Jacques-François Vandermonde, originally from Landrecies in

French Flanders French Flanders (french: La Flandre française) is a part of the historical County of Flanders in present-day France where a dialect of Dutch was or still is traditionally spoken. The region lies in the modern-day region of Hauts-de-France and r ...

, was a doctor of medicine, receiving his degree from the Faculty of Medicine of

Reims Reims ( , , ; also spelled Rheims in English) is the most populous city in the French department of Marne, and the 12th most populous city in France. The city lies northeast of Paris on the Vesle river, a tributary of the Aisne. Founded by ...

. In 1720, he left for the Far East in the service of the

French East India Company The French East India Company (french: Compagnie française pour le commerce des Indes orientales) was a colonial commercial enterprise, founded on 1 September 1664 to compete with the English (later British) and Dutch trading companies in the ...

. He first served at Poulo Condor, then in Canton and finally in the at the time Portuguese colony of

Macao Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...

where he worked as a doctor from 1723. Charles-Augustin Vandermonde was born in Macao in 1727. After the death of his mother, Doria Espérance Cacilla, Charles-Augustin and his father returned to France and Paris in 1732, where the father died in 1746. Charles-Augustin Vandermonde became a doctor of medicine at the Paris Faculty of Medicine in 1750. He died in 1762 at the age of 34.

Work

In 1756 he published the ''Essai sur la manière de perfectionner l'espèce humaine'' in which he argued that humans can be improved by applying principles of animal breeding to them. He also edited one of the first medical periodicals, the ''Recueil périodique d’observations de médecine, chirurgie, pharmacie'' (later the ''Journal de médecine, chirurgie, pharmacie''). In 1759 he anonymously published a popular medical dictionary, the ''Dictionnaire portatif de santé''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vandermonde, Charle-Augustin 1727 births 1762 deaths 18th-century French physicians 18th-century Macau people