VOL. XXII. 3 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 497 



j4n Account of Books, viz. Petri Chirac * de Molu Cordis Adversaria Jnalytica. 

 Monsp. 1698. 12mo. N° 2ti.3, p. 559. 



The author of this discourse endeavours to deliver an entire system of the 

 motion of the heart, and its causes, in an analytic method, advancing each 

 position in the order the mind arrives at its knowledge ; dividing his subject 

 into 3 distinct inquiries. J. What is the cause of the contraction of the heart ? 

 2. What is the cause of its dilatation? 3. Why the motion of the ventricles 

 and auricles are not contemporary, but alternate? To justify himself from the 

 charge of borrowing from M. Vieussens, he annexes the whole 1 1th Chap, de 

 Motii Cordis et Auricularum illius, out of his book de Principiis proximis et 

 remotis Mixtorum. Nor can he forbear charging that gentleman with robbing 

 him of his invention, of extorting an acid out of the blood, by distilling its 

 fixed salt with l)ole, which way he pretends first to have taught in his public 

 lectures. 



* Mons. de Chirac was designed for the church, but exchanged the study of theology for that of 

 physic; and in 16S2 was admitted a member of the Faculte de Montpellier, where he read a course 

 of medical lectures for several years. In 1692 he was appointed physician to the army of Roussillon, 

 and the year following he gave proofs of his professional skill in the treatment of a dysentery, 

 which prevailed among the Frejich forces at the siege of Roses. In 170S he attended the Duke of 

 Orleans as physician, in his campaigns in Italy. The duke was so badly wounded in the wrist at 

 the siege of Turin, that it was apprehended an amputation of the arm would be inevitable. M. de 

 Chirac proposed as a chance of saving the limb to have it bathed in the water of Bal.iruc, which 

 was accordingly procured from France, and a perfect cure was the consequence. M.de Chirac after- 

 wards accompanied the Duke into Spain ; and when these expeditions were ended, he settled at 

 Paris, where he soon got into extensive practice ; though his deportment was very different from that 

 of the majority of his rivals, for he had nothing of obsequiousness or flattery in his manner, being a 

 man of very few words, and always resisting the whims and caprices of his patients, whenever they 

 interfered with his plans of medicine and diet; from a persuasion that it is as much the duty of a 

 physician to enforce discipline to the sick, as of a general to enforce it in an army. On the death of 

 Homberg in 1715, the Duke of Orleans, then Regent of France, made him his chief physician; 

 and in 1/30 he was appointed first physician to the King. He died in 1732, aged 82- In the course 

 of a long life he acquired, by the exercise of his profession, a considerable fortune ; a part of which 

 he bequeathed to the University of Montpellier, for the endowment of 2 new medical professorships. 

 He had projected the establishment of a medical society at Paris, which should hold a correspondence 

 with practitioners in various parts of the country, especially on the subject of epidemic diseases ; but 

 he died before his plan (which was opposed by the faculty at Paris) could be completed. Hisprin- 

 cipal writings, besides the work above noticed, consist of a Treatise des Fievres Malignes, and 

 Dissertations et Consultations Medicinales de Chirac et Sylva, published some years after his death,. 



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