Boyer, John Baptist Nicholas

, a learned French physician, was born at Marseilles, August 5, 1693. His father, intending to bring him up to business, gave him a suitable education, and afterwards sent him to Constantinople, to his uncle, who was consul there; but rinding him inclined to literature, and to the study of medicine, he sent him, on his return from the Levant, to the university at Montpellier. In 1717, he took the degree of doctor, and gave for jiis inaugural thesis, “A dissertation on Inoculation of the Small Pox,” which he had seen practised at Constantinople. On the plague breaking out at Marseilles, in 1720, he was sent there with five other physicians; and his conduct on that occasion having been approved, he was rewarded by the king with a pension, and was made physician to a regiment of guards. He was some years after invited to Hunspruche, a town in the bishopric of Treves, where an infectious fever was making great ravages, and, in 1742, to Paris, on a similar occasion. His success at these places occasioned him to be sent for to Beauvais, in. 1750, where by his judicious management he prevented -the spreading of an infections fever, infesting that country. For these services he was honoured' by the king with letters of nobility, and invested with the order of St. Michael. He died at Paris, April 2, 1768. His works are, “Methode indiquee contre la maladie epidemique | convient de regner a Beauvais,” Paris, 1750, a quarto pamphlet, of only ten pages. “Methode a suivre dans le traitement de differentes maladies epidemiques qui regnent le plus ordinairernent dans la generality de Paris,” 1761, 12mo. He wrote, in 1745, a “Memoir” on the disease infesting the cattle at that time, which was sent to the royal society in London, and procured him a place in the list of their foreign members. He also gave a nevr edition of the “Codex medicamentarius,” seu “Pharmacopoeia Parisiensis,” 4to, a very useful and well digested work. ¹