Pierre Jean George Cabanis
Pierre -Jean -Georges Cabanis ( born June 5, 1757 Cosnac in Correze, † May 5, 1808 at Meulan ) was a French physician, physiologist and philosopher.
Life and work
He was in Cosnac (Corrèze ), the son of Jean Baptiste Cabanis ( 1725-1786 ), a lawyer and agronomist born. His mother was Marie -Hélène d' Escarolle de Souleyrac († 1765 ). At the age of ten, he attended the Collège in Brive- la -Gaillarde.
Cabanis studied in Paris humanities and 1773 he accompanied a Polish nobleman to Warsaw, where he worked as a secretary for him. From 1773 to 1775 he traveled through Germany and Poland.
Cabanis is heavily inspired by the English thinkers of the Enlightenment and philosopher John Locke, whose writings he accompanied during his studies and read him on his way to the classical philosophy and philosophy of his time. But the works of Étienne Bonnot de Condillac found him busy while recording. His original contribution was the introduction of considerations of both thinkers in the physiology and psychology of his time.
Since 1775, he devoted himself in Paris medicine and practiced as a physician in Auteuil. During the reign of terror he lived in retirement, and in 1794 professor of the clinic at the medical school in Paris and member of the Council of Five Hundred, the Conseil des Cinq -Cents. An important confidant was the medical colleague from the school of Montpellier, the physician and author Pierre Roussel. Cabanis published in 1790 Observations sur les hôpitaux gave him the necessary reputation for a job as administrator of hospitals in Paris, membre de la commission des hôpitaux and from 1795 he was Professor of Hygiene at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris.
The work of Cabanis can be divided into three main groups, those on the history of medicine, and on the organization of medical education and hospitals. And as the last group, the philosophy of medicine and in particular the relationship between the physical and moral, modern physiology and psychology.
In biology, he represented a vitalist position the school to Georg Ernst Stahl, which is evident in the posthumously published work, Lettre sur les premières Causes (1824 ). A complete edition of works of Cabanis work was posthumously started in 1825 and published in five volumes. In his major work, rapport du physique et du moral de l' homme, he describes the relationships that exist between the physical and spiritual aspects of man. Psychology is connected for Cabanis directly with biology. All mental processes are developed by the sensuality and sensibility itself is a property of the nervous system. The soul is not an entity but a fortune, a function of the brain. Just as the stomach and the intestine receives food to digest them, so the brain digests impressions and secretes it as another thought.
He regularly visited the society of Madame Helvetius in Auteuil, where he was to other leading men of his time in contact.
During the last two years of life of Honoré Mirabeau, he was associated closely with him and gave him as a doctor 's care.
On Saturday, May 14, 1796 Cabanis Charlotte Félicité de Grouchy married ( 1768-1844 ), sister of Marshal Emmanuel de Grouchy and Sophie de Grouchy ( 1764-1822 ). This marriage came a daughter Annette Paméla Cabanis (* 1800).
From 1803 until his death he was a member of the Académie française ( seat 40 ). He was a member of the Masonic Lodge, founded in 1776 the Les Neuf Sœurs.
Cabanis was buried in the Panthéon in Paris. His heart was buried in the cemetery of Auteuil.
Works (selection)
- Journal de la maladie et de la mort d' Honoré -Gabriel -Victor- de Mirabeau Riquetti, 1791
- Rapport du physique et du moral de l' homme, 1802
- You degré de certitude de la médecine, 1797
- Observations sur les hôpitaux, 1789
- Rapport sur l' Organisation des écoles de médecine, 1799
- Quelques Considérations sur l' organization sociale, 1799
- Coup d' oeil sur les Révolutions et la réforme de la médecine, 1804
- Observations sur les affections catarrhales, 1807