Geoffroi, Stephen Francis

, a celebrated physician and chemist, was the son of an apothecary, and born at Paris Feb. 13, 1672. He travelled in his own country, and into England, Holland, and Italy, to complete his medical studies, and the collateral knowledge of botany and chemistry. On his return he obtained the degree of doctor, and became professor of chemistry at the king’s garden, and of medicine at the royal college. He was also fellow of the royal society in London, and member of the French academy of sciences. His modest, timid, and patient character, induced him to study nature with attention, and to aid her with caution; and he took an interest in the recovery of his patients, which at the beginning of his | practice was rather injurious to him, as causing him to betray too visible an anxiety. He never refused his advice to any one. He died Jan. 6, 1731. Just before his death he completed a pharmacopoeia, containing a collection of the compound medicines requisite to be kept by apothecaries, “Le Code Medicamentaire de lar Faculte” de Paris,“of which two editions, enlarged and corrected, were afterwards published. His papers on the materia medica were published under the title,” Tractatus de Materia Medica, sive, de Medicamentorum simplicium historia, virtute, delectu, et usu,“Paris, 1741, 3 vols. 8vo, under the inspection of Antoine de Jussieu. Several editions have been subsequently published, and it has been translated into French. Arnault de Nobleville, and Salerne, physicians of Orleans, published a continuation of this work, under the title of” Histoire Naturelle des Animaux,“Paris, 1756, 1757, in 6 vols. 12mo, which is deemed not unworthy to be ranked with the production of Geoffroi. From a ms copy of his lectures, Dr. G. Douglas translated and published in 1736,” A Treatise of the Fossil, Vegetable, and Animal substances that are made use of in physick,“8vo, to which the best account we have yet seen of the author is prefixed. He had a brother, Claude Joseph Geoffroi, who wrote an essay on the structure and use of the principal parts of flowers, and some other physiological papers printed in the” Memoires de l’acad. des sciences." ¹