[Maine de Biran (1766-1824), founder of the Société médicale de Bergerac].

Maine de Biran is essentially well known as a great philosopher but he was a prefect too - a high civil servant who represents the government in the French 'departments" - and a politician. In 1806, he founded, for physicians and chemists of his district the "Société médicale de Bergerac", one of the earliest created in France. The Society hold two meetings every year. At that time, it was considered that diseases were essentially caused by climatic ans topographic factors. The vaccination against smallpox, discovered by Jenner in 1796, was often debated. Sixty years before Charcot, a hysterical crisis of a young girl was perfectly described by a member of the Society. There was no professional secret and the patients' names were given. Recent publications were analysed; it was the case for the percussion of the thorax recently described by an Austrian physician. The Society took end in 1810, by lack of members and communications.