Hunauld, Francis Joseph

, an eminent anatomist and physician, was born at Chateau- Briant, in February 1701. His father was a physician, and practised at St. Malo. He studied first at Rennes, and afterwards at Angers and Paris, and received the degree of M. D. at Rheims in 1722. On his return to Paris he studied anatomy and | surgery with great assiduity, under the celebrated teachers Winslow and Du Verney, and was admitted into the academy of sciences in 1724. Having been honoured with the appointment of physician to the duke of Richelieu, he accompanied rliat nobleman in his embassy to the court of the emperor Charles VI. at Vienna, and ever afterwards retained his entire confidence, and had apartments in his house. On the death of Du Verney, in 1730, Hunauld was appointed his successor, as professor of anatomy in the king’s garden, where he soon acquired a reputation little short of that of his predecessor, and found the spacious theatre overflowing with pupils. Having been admitted a member of the faculty of medicine of Paris, he practised with great success, and attracted the notice of the court. He took a journey into Holland, where he became acquainted with the celebrated Boerhaave, with whom he ever afterwards maintained a friendly correspondence; and, in 1735, he visited London, where he was elected a member of the royal society, at one of the meetings of which he read some “Reflections on the operation for Fistula Lacrymalis,” which were printed in the Transactions. He was cut off in the vigour of life by a putrid fever, in December 1742, being in his forty-second year. The greater part of his writings consist of papers, which were published in various volumes of the memoirs of the academy of sciences, between 1729 and 1742 inclusive. Osteology was a favourite subject of his enquiry, and some of the most curious of his observations relate to the formation and growth of the bones of the skull. He likewise traced with great accuracy the lymphatics of the lungs to the thoracic duct, and the progress of some of the nerves of the thoracic viscera. He published anonymously, in 1726, a critique, in the form of a letter, on the book of Petit, relative to the diseases of the bones, which occasioned some controversy, and received the formal disapproval of the academy. Hunauld had collected a considerable anatomical museum, which was especially rich in preparations illustrative of osteology and the diseases of the bones, and which came into the possession of the academy after his death. ¹