[Montaigne and the experience of falling from his horse].

Around 1573 or 1574, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) suffered afallfrom his horse, followed by fainting for two or three hours. He describes the accident in the 6th chapter of the second volume of his Essays, from two points of view: evocation of the accident itself and description of what he felt during this experience that enabled him, somehow, to "be close to death". This text, where Montaigne explains one of his intimate experiences, appears as an important light on the origins and the nature of his Essays.

Guy Patin and his martyrology of those dead because of antimony.

Antimony was a chemical drug, similar to arsenic and lead, which was used in medicine since the 16th century. It brought intense controversy: for his supporters, it possessed exceptional properties, with three simultaneous effects, summarized by Libavius formula : vomere, cacare, sudare ..

[Raspail, propagandist himself from the "warnings" of the manual of health, between 1845 and 1878].

During the last thirty years of his life, between 1845 and 1878, François-Vincent Raspail (1794-1878) published each year a new edition of his Manuel de santé (Manual of Health), which was intended as a practical guide to prevent and treat, using in particular camphor, major human diseases. Each edition was accompanied by a preamble, as an annual forum where the "revered teacher" applied to give information on his family, his trial, his stays in prison, his resentment, his exile, his publications, schedules consultations, etc. As a libertarian protester against the powers wether medical, political or judicial, Raspail was a tireless defender of the poor and weak, and this attitude earned him his reputation and his popularity.

[Presence of terms for birds, aquatic animals and insects in medical language].

After a first lecture, in April 2013, about the presence of mammals in medical language, the author gives another part of his panorama of animal metaphors used in medicine, focusing this time on the birds, aquatic animals and insects. The second part of this study confirms that animals, or at least the image of them in the past, were regularly present in medical nosology.

[Esquirol and dementia].

Jean Etienne Dominique Esquirol (1772-1840), after Pinel (1745-1826), stated precisely the symptoms of dementia according to the new medical definition of the word: a disease including all the states of intellectual weakness for various reasons. For example Esquirol clearly distinguished dementia from mania--that is to say our present psychoses--, and also from mental deficiency. In the same time Esquirol became more and more conscious, from 1814 (cf.