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Gabriel François Venel (23 August 1723, Tourbes – 29 October 1775, Pézenas) was a French chemist, physician and a contributor to the Encyclopédie,[1] (673 items;[2] articles on chemistry, pharmacy, physiology and medicine).

Biography and Works

He is the son of Étienne Venel, physician and Anne Hiché, and was born in Tourbes in 1723.[3] In 1742 he obtained his doctorate in medicine from the University of Montpellier. He also attended the public courses in chemistry given by Rouelle in Paris, which confirmed his main interest in chemistry. Venel later on talked very highly of his professor, including in his famous article Chymie written for the Encyclopédie.

As inspecteur général des eaux minérales, with Pierre Bayen (1725–1798), he was tasked in 1753 to provide analysis of French mineral waters.[4] In 1768 he became a member of the Société royale des sciences de Montpellier.[2] In 1759 he obtained the chair of materia medica at the University of Montpellier.[4] In parallel, he also gave a course in chemistry outside of the University, in which he taught about the vegetal, mineral and animal chemistry. The practical demonstrations were performed by Jacques Montet.[3]

While often interpreted as an early chemist and Enlightenment thinker, Venel may have been influenced by Alchemy and Iatrochemistry. In his entry on chemistry in the Encyclopédie, he explicitly calls for a "New Paracelsus" to further develop the field.[5]

His work on mineral waters was interrupted in 1756 due to the cost of the Seven Years' War, but funds were gathered again in 1773, and Venel thus resumed his work and travels to analyse waters. His manuscript remained however unfinished. He died due to illness in 1775.[6]

Selected works

• Mémoire sur l'analyse des eaux de selters ou de seltz, 1755.
• Essai sur l'analyse des végétaux, 1755.
• Analyses chimiques des nouvelles eaux nimérales, vitrioliques, ferrugineuses, decouvertes à Passy dans la maison de Madame de Calsabigi, 1757.
• "Quaestiones chemicae duodecim ab illustrissimis viris ... propositae ... : pro Regiâ Cathedrâ vacante in Universitate Medicinae Monspeliensi", 1759.
• Instructions sur l'usage de la houille, 1775.
• Précis de matiere médicale, 1787.[7]
• Books about Gabriel François Venel:
• Gabriel-François Venel (1723-1775): sa place dans la chimie française du XVIIIe siècle, by Christine Lecornu Lehman, Université de Paris X: Nanterre, 2000 (1404 pages).[8]

References

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (April 2012) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 5,051 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Gabriel François Venel]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|fr|Gabriel François Venel}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

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