Антуан Франсуа Фуркруа: Жизнь и вклад в химию и медицинское образование Франции

French chemist

Antoine François Fourcroy (ɑ̃twan fʁɑ̃swa fuʁkʁwa; 15 June 175516 December 1809) Fourcroy's attention was turned specifically to chemistry by J. B. M. Bucquet (1746–1780), the professor of chemistry at the Medical School of Paris. In 1784 Fourcroy was chosen to succeed P. J. Macquer (1718–1784) as lecturer in chemistry at the college of the Jardin du Roi, where his lectures attained great popularity.

Fourcroy was one of the earliest converts to the views of Lavoisier, which he helped to make widely known by his own voluminous writings.

Fourcroy's views and studies grew from Bucquet. Fourcroy was a critic of earlier use of chemistry in medicine and saw great importance in studying the chemical materials of plants and animals, particularly for medical use. Fourcroy also had a prominent role in developing law that would affect medical education in France. Fourcroy collaborated with physician Francois Chaussier to create a report that would be the basis of the Law of 1794, which integrated medicine and surgery and established health schools that taught both of these fields to all students. Prior to this law, medical education was heterogeneous throughout France, with several different colleges and universities operating under varying standards. The law pushed by Fourcroy unified the French medical education system under centralized authority, and led to the issuing of national licensing years later.

While observing the 18th century clinics of Fourcroy’s time, he observed several problems. Fourcroy noticed that physicians got accustomed to seeing the diseases of an individual patient but failed in considering a large number of cases comparatively. There was also practical problems with this idea, as physician’s individual practices were insufficient in accommodating for large numbers of people with large varieties of issues. To deal with this Fourcroy proposed a program in 1791 to establish more effective clinical laboratories. It was Fourcroy who had initially noted the division that chemistry had undergone from natural history, concluding that the two studies no longer shared objectives nor methods. While natural historians of his era merely described and preserved that which they studied, as Fourcroy believed, it was chemists who now sought to uncover the most fundamental structures of the natural world by experimental analysis. In his publications, Fourcroy referred to many other contemporary chemists as well as those from other nations, proposing that the extensive chemical reform being done was a collaborative effort.

In 1801, Fourcroy was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. On 16 December 1809, the very day on which he died in Paris, Fourcroy was created a count of the French empire. was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, presented at the Académie des Sciences (Paris) in 2015. It is believed that Cape Fourcroy, at the western tip of Bathurst Island, Northern Territory, Australia, is named after Fourcroy. The cape was named during Baudin's expedition to Australia, and it is known that Baudin had a copy of one of Fourcroy's texts with him on the Géographe.

By his conduct as a member of the Convention, Fourcroy has been accused of contributing to Lavoisier's death. Baron Cuvier, in his Eloge historique of Fourcroy, repelled such charges. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition: although active, though secret, participation cannot be proved against Fourcroy, "he can scarcely be acquitted of time serving indifference."