La nomenclature médicale de François Boissier de Sauvages en tant que pré-terminologie du XVIIIe siècle: point de vue linguistique

Abstract

It is accepted that modern technologies, as orderly collections of terms of respective disciplines, were formed just in the second half of the 20^th century, alongside the dynamic development of sciences and technology, as well as their mass dissemination and world-spreading. It is evident however that vocabularies of individual sciences and crafts had existed long before, although through the centuries the need of systematization hadn’t been seen. Just the 18^th century, introducing the concept of systems (e.g. in botany, zoology, medicine etc.), simultaneously opened the road to forming corresponding nomenclatures which, on one hand call individuals affiliated to a certain discipline, and on the other hand define their position in the system. Many of those nomenclatures, e.g. the monumental work of a French botanist and physician of the Enlightenment epoch, François Boissier de Sauvages, entitled La nosologie méthodique […] from year 1771, revolutionary for their times, have saved their meaning until nowadays. Our article, reminding of presumptions took by the author for his typology of diseases, focuses afterwards on the linguistic dimension of the proposed classification and reminds of its undisputed impact on the modern medical nomenclature.