Michel-Philippe Bouvart

Michel-Philippe Bouvart (Chartres, 11 January 1717 – Paris, 19 January 1787) was a French medical doctor.

He was made a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1743 and a professor in the Paris Faculty of Medicine in 1745 and also in the Collège Royal in 1745, where he took the medical chair previously held by . Louis XV granted him letters of nobility and the Order of St. Michael in 1768 or 1769.

Bouvart was famous for his quick diagnoses and accurate prognoses, but also for his caustic wit

Although he was able and learned, he is perhaps best known for his witticisms.

Witticisms

Variants of Bouvart's quip about the placebo effect of using a new treatment or medicine "while it still works" are often quoted without crediting him; it is also often attributed to people who never said it. The quip may have been inspired by a similar 17th-century anecdote about a doctor whose reputation was transient.

This story has been compared to Euricius Cordus's epigram:

Early life

Bouvart's father Claude was a physician. Michel-Philippe received his medical degree in Reims in 1730 and practiced in Chartres. In 1736, he left for Paris.