Michel-Philippe Bouvart

Michel-Philippe Bouvart
Born(1717-01-11)11 January 1717
Died19 January 1787(1787-01-19) (aged 70)
Paris
NationalityFrench
OccupationPhysician
Years active1730-1783
Known forWitticisms
Medical career
InstitutionsFrench Academy of Sciences, Collège Royal, Paris Faculty of Medicine
AwardsOrder of St. Michael

Michel-Philippe Bouvart (Chartres, 11 January 1717 Paris, 19 January 1787) was a French medical doctor.

He was made a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1743 and a professor in the Paris Faculty of Medicine in 1745 and also in the Collège Royal in 1745, where he took the medical chair previously held by Pierre-Jean Burette. Louis XV granted him letters of nobility and the Order of St. Michael in 1768 or 1769.

Bouvart was famous for his quick diagnoses and accurate prognoses, but also for his caustic wit and polemical writing against his fellow physicians, notably Théodore Tronchin, Théophile de Bordeu, Exupère Joseph Bertin, Antoine Petit. He was opposed to inoculation against smallpox. He championed Virginia polygala or Seneka as a remedy for snakebite.

Although he was able and learned, he is perhaps best known for his witticisms.