Melchisédech or Melchisédec Thévenot , born towards 1620 and died in Iso the October 29th 1692, is a French writer and physicist. Inventor of the Spirit level and author of the first treaty of Swimming in French, it is also diplomatic cartographer, and Bibliothécaire of the king. Its Relations of various curious voyages gathers all that an European could know about the world at the 17th century. It is as of him, says one, as its famous nephew, Jean Thévenot, will inherit his taste for the voyages.

Its life

Nothing of his origins are known. Its biblical first name seems to indicate a Jewish ascent or, more probably, ancestors Huguenot S. One is unaware of pareillement from where came to him its fortune, undoubtedly considerable, and from where it held its knowledge of the English, of the Latin and the Greek , without speaking about the Hebrew , the Arab and the Turkish . What one knows, it is that he is ambassador with Genoa in 1647, then with Rome in the Années 1650. It assists with the Conclave 1655 at the conclusion which will be elected the pope Alexandre VII. He is librarian of the king starting from 1684 and becomes member of the Academy of Science in 1685.

Its scientific work

Its work is numerous. He studies the Astronomie, the Physique, the Médecine and the Mathématiques. He undertakes experiments on the siphon and the Capillarité, proposes the Ipecacuanha like remedy for the Dysenterie and preaches the benefit of the juice of Citron. It maintains a correspondence on a European scale with the scientists his time, among which Christiaan Huygens, Henry Oldenburg and Jan Swammerdam; some of them also remain at his place in Iso, where Niels Steensen comes one day to dissect an human brain in front of an attentive floor. As around Henri Louis Habert de Montmor, of which he attends itself the circle, around Thévenot an academy is formed little by little which will bear its name and will count among those whose in 1666 was born the Academy of Science.

In 1660 or 1661, Melchisédech Thévenot invents the Spirit level. It fills its instrument with alcohol, assembles it on stone and provides it with a lens. It announces its invention with Robert Hooke with London and Vincenzo Viviani with Florence. Adrien Auzout will recommendera of it the use with the Academy of Sciences when this one is on the point of launching a forwarding to Madagascar in 1666.

Art to swim

Its Art To swim shown by figures with opinions to bathe usefully appears in Paris in 1696. The book is translated into English as of 1699; Benjamin Franklin, swimmer enthusiastic and inventive of the palms, is one of its readers. Two new editions will appear in France during the 18th century, each one increased of essays which explore the history and the ramifications of them. It is by the means of this book that the brews is spread in Europe and that the French, during nearly one century, learn how to swim.

The authors of the Encylopédie will treat it however top: “Mr. Thevenot published a curious book entitled, art to swim, shown by figures. And before him Everard Digby, anglois, & Nicolas Winman, German, swage already given the rules of this Article Thevenot made, so to speak, only copy these two authors; but if it had tried hard of reading the treaty of Borelli, with half of the application which it read the two others, it auroit not supported, as he did, than the man nageroit naturally, like the other animals, if he in étoit prevented by the fear which increases the danger. ”

Curious voyages

The accounts of travellers are one of its passions. Melchisédech Thévenot had at the end of its life 290 manuscripts, whose inventory will be drawn up in 1692 and the collection bought by the Bibliothèque of the king in 1712. It is between 1663 and 1672 that it makes appear the Relations of various curious voyages which did not esté not published, and which one translated or drew from the originals of the French travellers, Spanish, German Portuguese, anglois, hollandois, Persan, Arab & other Eastern, given to the public by the care of Melchisedech Thevenot; the whole enriched by not described plants, unknown animals in Europe, & geographical maps which were not still published . Such as Jean Chapelain perceives it, the goal of this collection, at which all the friends of Thévenot are put at contribution, is “to bring quoy to be exerted with the reasoning of the contemplators of nature. ”

In addition to a small number of extracts of old authors such as Cosmas Indicopleustès there, one finds accounts, sometimes new, in complete or shortened form, of voyages accomplished between 1449 and 1672 in the areas, countries or continents following: Russia, the Crimea, Tartarie, China, Formosa, India, Persian, Arabia, Holy Land, Siam, Bengal, Borneo, Egypt, Filipino, Japan, Africa, America. The unit is composed of 55 booklets joined together in four richly illustrated volumes: engravings representing the flora, fauna, the costumes and the habits, reproductions of the Chinese written forms , chaldéenne and geographical mandéenne, charts and plans of which some are drawn by Thévenot itself. There exists of each volume several editions whose contents vary. Voltaire, Turgot, of Holbach, of Brushes, John Locke, William Beckford and her friend Antoine Galland, the translator of the Thousand and One Nights , had copies of them.

Melchisédech Thévenot in addition took part in the compilation of texts of Confucius published in 1687 under the title Sinarum Philosophus , and undoubtedly in much of other companies of which there does not remain any more any trace. Leibniz, which compared it while joking with Briarée, monster of the Greek antiquity with hundred arm and fifty heads, said of him which it was among the men “one of most universal than I connoisse; nothing escapes its curiosity. ”

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