Michel Étienne Descourtilz

Michel Étienne Descourtilz (25 November 1775, Boiste near Pithiviers – 1835, Paris), was a French physician, botanist and historiographer of the Haitian revolution.

In 1799, after completing his medical studies he traveled to Charleston, South Carolina and Santiago, Cuba, arriving in Haiti on 2 April. Despite a passport from Toussaint Louverture and serving as physician with the forces of Dessalines he was in constant danger. His plant collections were mostly from between Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien and along the Artibonite River. 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^{[disambiguation needed ]} and served as president of the Paris Linnean Society.

The standard author abbreviation Desc. is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.^[1]

Sources

• Urban, Ignaz. Notae biographicae, Symb. Antill. 3:36,1900.
• Biography in French with bibliography from the Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales.

References

1. ^ "Author Query". International Plant Names Index. http://www.ipni.org/ipni/authorsearchpage.do. 

External links

• Plants described by Descourtilz on IPNI
• Digitized works by Descourtilz on the Internet Archive.

Bibliography

• Complete bibliography on WorldCat.

Persondata
Name	Descourtilz, Michel Etienne
Alternative names
Short description	French physician, botanist and historiographer of the Haitian revolution
Date of birth	25 November 1775
Place of birth	Boiste near Pithiviers
Date of death	1835
Place of death	Paris