The Chymical Capuchins of the Louvre: Seminal Principles and Charitable Vocations in France under Louis XIV.

This article explores the links between chymical medicine, charity, and vocation in the writings and careers of Henri Rousseau de Montbazon and Nicolas Aignan, known as "the Louvre Capuchins" (les capucins du Louvre) because they operated a royally sponsored medical laboratory at the Louvre from 1678 to 1679. It shows that Rousseau and Aignan's hybrid persona as chymical physicians and mendicant friars allowed them to leverage courtly values surrounding charitable poor relief into lucrative patronage under Louis XIV. Aignan in particular developed a detailed theological and natural philosophical defence of this identity, framing it as a recovery of the authentic vocation of the Christian priest-physician, a healer of bodies as well as souls. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, I argue that Rousseau and Aignan's attempts to reconcile their identities as both friars and healers into a single persona were increasingly challenged by the medical establishment and their own order.

Testing Drugs and Attesting Cures: Pharmaceutical Monopolies and Military Contracts in Eighteenth-Century France.

This article explores the role of testing in the allocation of royal monopoly privileges for drugs in eighteenth-century France by following the multi-generational fortunes of a single "secret remedy" from 1713 to 1776: the poudre fébrifuge of the Chevalier de Guiller. On at least five occasions, this drug was tested on patients in order to decide whether it should be protected by a privilege and whether or not its vendors should be awarded lucrative contracts to supply it in bulk to the French military. Although efforts were made early in the century to test the drug through large-scale hospital trials and to relegate privilege granting to a bureaucratic commission, the case of the poudre fébrifuge instead suggests that military expediency and relatively small-scale trials administered personally by royal practitioners remained decisive in determining whether or not a drug received a monopoly privilege or a military contract.