The beginning of the teaching of chemistry in Lorraine: the Royal College of Medicine and the Faculty of Medicine of Nancy (1752 and 1776)

The faculty of medicine of the university created in Pont-à-Mousson in the second part of the XVIth century, transferred to Nancy in 1768, was not in possession of a chair of chemistry, but, in the middle of the XVIIIth century, it was interested by the development of this science. In Nancy, the Royal College of medicine, created by King Stanislas in 1752, disposed of a professor of chemistry since 1756, and also of a demonstrator who was one of the apothecaries of the town. In Metz, a course of this science occurred between 1756 and 1769 with the apothecary Thyrion. In 1776, the physician Henry Michel du Tennetar and the apothecary Pierre-François Nicolas opened a private course of chemistry, immediately transformed into a chair of the faculty of medicine. This chair will be maintained until Révolution. The personality and work of Michel du Tennetar and Nicolas, the circumstances and conditions of the creation of the chair, the inheritance of Michel, and the appointment of the demonstrator, also an apothecary, are successively described.