François Victor Mérat de Vaumartoise

François Victor Mérat de Vaumartoise (5 July 1780 in Paris – 13 March 1851 in Paris) was a French medical doctor, botanist and mycologist.

In 1803 he obtained his medical doctorate with a thesis on heavy metal poisoning, afterwards serving as chef de clinique at the Hôpital de la Charité in Paris. He was a member of the Académie nationale de médecine, a correspondent member of the Société linnéenne de Lyon (1824–1851) and a member of the Société nationale et centrale d'agriculture. He was an Officer of the Légion d'honneur (1847) and a Chevalier of the Order du Christ de Portugal (1828). During his ten years at Charité he treated and cured numerous patients with lead poisoning. and of the botanical genera Corvisartia (family Asteraceae), Lerouxia (family Primulaceae) and Robertia (family Ranunculaceae). His botanical and medical interest met in his report on the use of pomegranate root to fight tapeworm infections. He received a monetary award from the Academy of Sciences for this work. Revue de la flore parisienne, suivie du texte du « Botanicon parisiense » de Vaillant avec les noms linnéens en regard. Paris : J.-B. Baillière, 1843.

Toward the end of his life Dr. Merat published a bibliography of his 213 printed works. In the introduction he stated: "At the age of seventy and at an advanced stage in my career, I felt I had to print an inventory of my work, to remind myself of the number and nature of my works over the past half-century. Study has been my constant need, I owe it the quiet days of my simple and busy life; it made me forget, on a few occasions, the pains attached to our human nature, and from which my obscurity has not always been able to remove me."