Samuel-Auguste Tissot

Who was Samuel-Auguste Tissot?

Samuel Auguste André David Tissot was a notable 18th century Swiss physician.

A well reputed Calvinist Protestant neurologist, physician, professor and Vatican adviser who practiced in the Swiss city of Lausanne. He wrote on the diseases of the poor, on masturbation, on the diseases of the men of letters and of rich people, and nervous diseases.

He devoted an 83-page chapter to the study of migraine in his Traité des nerfs et de leurs maladies. He used his own observations and the existing medical treatises of the day. His work is considered by modern doctors as a basis for "future generations of doctors." He is also recognized as "the classical authority on migraine."

In 1760, he published L'Onanisme, his own comprehensive medical treatise on the purported ill-effects of masturbation.