Pierre Jean George Cabanis

Who was Pierre Jean George Cabanis?

Pierre Jean George Cabanis was a French physiologist and materialist philosopher.

Cabanis was born at Cosnac, the son of Jean Baptiste Cabanis, a lawyer and agronomist. At the age of ten, he attended the college of Brives, where he showed great aptitude for study, but his independence of spirit was so great that he was almost constantly in a state of rebellion against his teachers and was finally expelled. He was then taken to Paris by his father and left to carry on his studies at his own discretion for two years. From 1773 to 1775 he travelled in Poland and Germany, and on his return to Paris he devoted himself mainly to poetry. About this time he sent to the Académie française a translation of the passage from Homer proposed for their prize, and, though he did not win, he received so much encouragement from his friends that he contemplated translating the whole of the Iliad.

At his father's wish, he gave up writing and decided to engage in a more settled profession, selecting medicine. In 1789 his Observations sur les hôpitaux procured him an appointment as administrator of hospitals in Paris, and in 1795 he became professor of hygiene at the medical school of Paris, a post which he exchanged for the chair of legal medicine and the history of medicine in 1799.