Jean-Jacques Paulet (26 April 1740 – 4 August 1826) was a French mycologist. Paulet was born in

Anduze Anduze (; oc, Andusa) is a commune in the Gard department in southern France.Anduze", Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., Vol. II, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1878, p. 24 . The village is at the foot of the Cevennes range, in the limesto ...

, France and studied medicine in

Montpellier Montpellier (, , ; oc, Montpelhièr ) is a city in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region of Occitania, Montpellier is the prefecture of the department of Hérault. In 2018, 290,053 people l ...

, where he received his PhD in March 1764. He published in Paris in 1765 a book titled ''d’Histoire de la petite vérole, avec les moyens d’en préserver les enfants...'' (History of smallpox, with the means to protect children ...), which was followed by a French translation of the book on smallpox by Abu Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi (ninth or tenth century). He completed this series of works by three more books, published in Paris between 1768 and 1776, in which he outlined wide-scale measures of smallpox protection. Paulet was interested in

ergotism Ergotism (pron. ) is the effect of long-term ergot poisoning, traditionally due to the ingestion of the alkaloids produced by the '' Claviceps purpurea'' fungus—from the Latin "club" or clavus "nail" and for "head", i.e. the purple club-he ...

and published several studies in Mémoires de l’Académie de médecine alongside such scientist as Henri Alexandre Tessier (1741–1837) and Charles Jacques Saillant (1747–1814). He was also known for his opposition to the

animal magnetism Animal magnetism, also known as mesmerism, was a protoscientific theory developed by German doctor Franz Mesmer in the 18th century in relation to what he claimed to be an invisible natural force (''Lebensmagnetismus'') possessed by all livi ...

. In 1805 he published a treatise on the bite of asp viper and in 1815 a review of the history of medicine by

Sprengel Sprengel is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Hermann Sprengel (1834–1906), chemist * Karl or Carl Sprengel (1787–1859), botanist * Kurt Sprengel (1766–1833), botanist * Christian Konrad Sprengel (1750–1816), teacher and ...

. His expertise in mycology was summarized in ''Traité complet sur les champignons'' (1775) which was considered a seminal work on fungi. It will be followed in 1791 by ''Traité complet sur les champignons'' and two other books on botany: ''Examen de l’ouvrage de M. Stackhouse sur les genres de plantes de Théophraste'' (1816) and ''La Botanique ou Flore et Faune de Virgile'' (1824). Paulet was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in the section of medicine and surgery on 22 October 1821.

References

* Amédée Dechambre (1885). Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales. G. Masson (Paris). 1740 births 1826 deaths French mycologists {{France-scientist-stub