Jacques Anselme Dorthes , born in Vauvert ( Gard ) on 19 July 1759 and died during the 1794 campaign of the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees , was a French physician, entomologist and naturalist. ^{[1] [2]}

Biography [ edit ]

Destined to enter the orders, he abandoned the seminary in 1784 and turned to medicine. ^{[3] [4]}

He studied at the University of Montpellier where he became a doctor of medicine in 1787. At the same time, he became interested in entomology and botany, particularly with Antoine Gouan .

He participated unsuccessfully in the competition for the medicine professorship of 1789-1790 opened on the death of professors Jean Sabatier and Jean-Charles de Grimaud. ^[5]

He died on active service during the campaign of 1794 , when he had gone to serve voluntarily as a military doctor in hospitals. ^[1]

Works [ edit ]

On December 20, 1787, he read to the Royal Society of Sciences of Montpellier a memoir containing observations on a new genus of insect. The protonym Dorthesia , given to a scale insect , was created in its honour following this first description on the leaves of a euphorbia ( Euphorbia charachias ) near Nimes. The species Dorthesia characias was described by Arsene Thiebaut de Berneaud  [ fr ] . ^[6]

John Obadiah Westwood described the species Dorthesia seychellarum ^[7] later called Icerya seychellarum . The name Dorthesia was changed to Dorthezia and then to Orthezia . ^[8]

The same year, he joined the Royal Society of Sciences of Montpellier. ^[9] He successively published various productions relating to natural history and rural economy:

• Observations of a singular phenomenon, caused by a multitude of black ants ( Formica nigra ) gathered in the atmosphere, which they obscure like a cloud;
• Research on the pine processionary caterpillar ;
• Memories on how to protect chestnut trees from caterpillar damage, on the insects that devour young plants, on those that damage wheat and alfalfa ;
• Memory on the clematis ( Clematis flammula ) with which he proposes to form artificial meadows , to multiply and improve the fodder in his regions;
• Overview of the Mediterranean aggradations in the Lower Languedoc .

In 1788, he won the prize of the Royal Society of Sciences of Montpellier by writing the eulogy of Pierre Richer de Belleval . ^[10]

He published a number of entomological articles in the “Memoires de la Societe royale d'agriculture de France” of which he was a corresponding member. ^[11]

He was a member of the Linnean Society of London ^[12] and he corresponded with James Edward Smith . ^[13]

He was also a competent geologist. ^[11] We owe him a dissertation on the rolled pebbles of the Rhone composed with the Baron de Servieres and dissertations on other stones around Nimes including variolite . ^[12]

References [ edit ]

Bibliography [ edit ]

• Dumas, C.L. (1809). Recueil des bulletins, publies par la Societe libre des sciences et belles-lettres de Montpellier (in French). Montpellier: Veuve Tournel et fils . Retrieved 25 February 2021 .
• Saucerotte, Constant (1887). Les Medecins pendant la Revolution (in French). Paris: Perrin. p. 192 . Retrieved 25 February 2021 .

External links [ edit ]

• Dorthes on IPNI