ABSTRACT
For a brief period from the late 1740s into the 1750s some of the creators of Montpellier vitalism sought learning, position, and reward in the intellectual and scientific world of the capital. In these years Bordeu, Venel, and Barthez forged important connections to the forward-looking scientific institutions of the capital and joined forces for a time with the Encyclopedists. Two students of the early vitalists, jean-Joseph Menuret de Chambaud and Henri Fouquet, also studied in Paris in the late 1750s, repeating steps their teachers had taken to extend their knowledge of medicine and the sciences. Yet by 1760, the only one to remain in the capital was Bordeu. Venel and Barthez left Paris in the late 1750s to compete for professorships in Montpellier. 1 Menuret's whereabouts in the years between 1757 and 1765 are uncertain, but it appears that by 1760 he had returned to his native town of Montelimar in the FrancheComte.z Fouquet too returned in the 1750s from Paris to Montpellier, where he served as a staff physician for the royal military hospital and taught at least two stints as a fill-in for Barthez at the university.3
