Michel Étienne Descourtilz

Michel Étienne Descourtilz (25 November 1775, Boiste near Pithiviers – 1835 or 1836, Paris), was a French physician, botanist and historian of the Haitian Revolution. He was the father of illustrator Jean-Théodore Descourtilz, with whom he sometimes collaborated.[1]

Plate of a pineapple from Descourtiz, 1877

In 1799, after completing his medical studies he traveled to Charleston, South Carolina and Santiago, Cuba, arriving in Haiti on 2 April.[2] Despite a passport from Toussaint Louverture and serving as physician with the forces of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, he was in constant danger.[3] His plant collections were mostly from between Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien and along the Artibonite River.[2] All his natural history collections and many drawings were destroyed during the course of the revolution. In 1803 he returned to France, worked as a physician in a hospital at Beaumont and served as president of the Paris Linnean Society.[2]

As a taxonomist he circumscribed the genus Nauchea (family Fabaceae).[4]

Bibliography

Sources and references

  1. Jean Théodore Descourtilz data.BnF.fr
  2. Ignaz Urban (1903). Symb. antill. Fratres Borntraeger. p. 36.
  3. BnF.Gallica (biography in French)
  4. Nauchea Descourt. Tropicos
  5. International Plant Names Index.  Descourt.


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