[A great revolutionary physician of the 18th century, Dr. Théodore Tronchin]

Tronchin, student and later successor of Boerhaave from Leiden, the most well known physician of the 18th century, took care of numerous famous patients. Interestingly, he treated several of them by correspondence only. In the archives of the Geneva university library are kept more than five hundred prescriptions written out by Tronchin. Based on these precious documents, one can see that Tronchin extensively fought against the use of venous bleedings, which was one of the medical treatments of the time. Some of the patients had previously gone through up to a hundred of these bleedings. He was in favour of a return to "nature" and of physical exercise. He acted on his patients, who travelled from all parts of Europe to see him, mostly through his personnel authority and the confidence he was able to induce.