[Climate and medicine in Quebec in the middle of the 18th century].

Abstract

Jean-François Gaultier arrived in Quebec from Normandy in 1742 and succeded Michel Sarrazin as the King's physician of the colony. His correspondence with the 'Académie royale des sciences de Paris' consisted of a meticulous description of his meteorological, botanical, agricultural and medical observations, as well as brief notes on the 'reigning diseases' (fevers, pulmonary diseases, dysenteric diseases), in this city of New France. It is important to understand that he belonged to the European movement of meteorologic medicine, an approach conceived by Hippocrates and developed by Sydenham in England during the second half of the 17th century, which aimed at establishing a tight correlation between meteorology and diseases. In the light of the actual historiography, Gaultier is the first physician to officially endorse this movement in the French colonies.