Théodore Tronchin

Annabelle Slingerland
Leiden, Netherlands

Life in eighteenth-century Geneva was idyllic in many ways. The religious wars had ended, epidemics were still far away, infant mortality was on the decline, Protestant immigrants were arriving, and money flowed into the city faster than the Rhône River. The city walls no longer seemed needed, yet still were there. The city addressed its growing population by permitting new buildings on courtyards, the addition of higher stories to existing buildings, and the expansion of suburbs outside of its fortifications. The population of communities such as Châtelaine, Les Eaux-Vives, Les Pâquis, Plainpalais, and Saint-Jean tripled. The Swiss had developed prosperous industries, including watchmaking, clothing, and hosiery. The aristocracy attracted domestic servants and craftsmen, but also students and tutors to the Geneva Academy, which had been founded by John Calvin in 1559. The countryside, mountains, and lake attracted many tourists as well, and lodging and restaurants boomed.

Into such a prosperous environment was born, in 1709, Théodore Tronchin. His mother, Angélique Calandrini, gave birth to her son in an elite, patrician family of second-generation Protestant refugees from Arles, part of the wealthy newcomers who worked in banking and commerce. His father, Jean-Robert Tronchin, was a member of the Conseil de Deux-Cents. Théodore grew up surrounded by domestic servants and parties. The family’s assimilation had been smooth, in contrast to the majority of immigrants for whom the habitation, a fee that allowed for permanent residency in Geneva, had increased to forty times the daily salary of a carpenter. Théodore was encouraged to become a clergyman by his father, but he enjoyed the life of the aristocratic circle in Geneva too much, dancing at balls until late at night without his parents’ knowledge.

He became more serious about his future after facing a life-threatening illness. When the “law boom” affected his father’s fortune, he went to London and stayed with a relative, the politician-philosopher Lord Bolingbroke. There he was surrounded by an entourage of intellectuals such as Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. Pope encouraged him to study at Cambridge, where he attended lectures by Richard Mead and was influenced by clergyman and classicist Richard Bentley. He read the work of Dutch physician and chemist Herman Boerhaave and was especially inspired by Elements of Chemistry (Traité de Chimie). This prompted a move to the University of Leiden to study with Boerhaave in 1728. Graduating in 1730, Boerhaave supported him in taking a position in Amsterdam: “He is another myself, you can consult me without leaving Amsterdam, by talking to him.” He later became president of the Amsterdam College of Physicians and practiced there for a quarter of a century.

In the early 1750s, Tronchin returned to Geneva, where he was awarded the title of Honorary Professor of Medicine. In 1762, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He accepted an offer in Paris in 1776, meeting resistance from colleagues as he had in the Netherlands and in Switzerland, where he was a rising star amid colleagues who favored the practices of traditional medicine, including bloodletting and purging. The traditionalists also did not contest the constricted dresses that Tronchin had observed to restrict breathing and movement. At the end of his life, he communicated extensively with Voltaire and Rousseau, who had become his patients. Throughout his career, he endeavored to build a healthy society, within and apart from the practice of medicine.

Tronchin maintained a large clientele, mainly in upper class and intellectual circles from the Netherlands, Switzerland, and France. They traveled to see him, and he also diagnosed and prescribed treatments through an extensive letter correspondence. He was the physician to Madame d’Epany, Grimm, Jean-Baptiste d’Alembert, and Denis Diderot. He was known for his tremendous ability to listen and understand, his charming and frank replies, and his serene and reassuring nature.

Yet he also spent time each day treating those who could not afford a doctor, often paying for their medications out of his own pocket, and growled about the greed of some doctors. He called this service to the less fortunate the “office of humanity,” which was largely unknown until his death.

His ties with people in influential positions allowed him to promote his convictions, such as making the controversial inoculation for smallpox a widespread preventive measure. He had learned about this in Holland, where he inoculated his own children and those of Louis Philippe Duke d’Orleans in 1756.

He also emphasized how patients themselves could contribute to their health, an early advocate of natural hygiene.* He prescribed exercise, good nutrition, sufficient fresh air even in winter, and breastfeeding, and he acknowledged the interaction between the psyche and the body. His advice to take an early morning walk became such a trend that to do so was referred to as “tronchiner.” And a non-restrictive dress that was shorter and easier to put on and wear was called the “tronchine.”

Tronchin died in Paris in 1781, attended by those who had visited his “office of humanity.” In 1908, the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal published an extensive sketch of his life. And in 1932, the New York Times published an article on the Tronchin House, which has often hosted dignitaries with a view of Mont Blanc and Lake Geneva, paintings by famous artists on its walls, a fine library of 5,000 volumes, and a record of the Tronchin family’s life.

End note

* “Medicine walks steadily only when it walks with nature; if it [nature] is out of sight, it [medicine] goes astray, and that good nature which is so little respected is almost always self-sufficient, for God—whose work it is—has not only given it the faculty of maintaining the health of the body, but has also enabled it to restore it when it is ill. The wise physician who knows this, is content to remove obstacles. He restrains it when it is too active, he excites it when it falls asleep, but it is it alone that cures.” Here Tronchin aligned with his teacher Boerhaave, who advocated an intellectual but natural approach to health.

Hektoen International

Théodore Tronchin

End note

Further reading