Pierre-François Nicolas (1743-1816), apothecary, physician, chemistry teacher on the eve of the French Revolution

Pierre-François Nicolas, was born in Saint-Mihiel in 1743, studied in this town and in St-Nicolas-de-Port near Nancy. At first he has been a military apothecary during the "Guerre de Sept-Ans". Then he studied pharmacy in Nancy and was received in 1768 at the "Maîtrise de pharmacie". With the physician Henri Michel du Tennatar, he created a teaching of chemistry for medicine students and became the professor of chemistry of the Faculty of Medicine in 1781. During these years, he published some research results about hydrology, distillery, biochemistry (phosphorus in bone), toxicology, dyeing... At the end of 1783, he succeeded in the realization of a balloon and he played an important part in Nancy during the French Revolution. Professor at the "Ecole de médecine" in Strasbourg for some weeks, then in Nancy at the "Ecole centrale" and at the "Société de santé", he left Nancy towards the mid-1798. Staying in Paris for two or three years he probably worked with Fourcroy and perhaps Chaptal and Berthollet. In the early years of the nineteenth century he was appointed professor in the "Ecole centrale" du Calvados" and some years after at the "Faculté des sciences" in Caen. His latest significant work with Gueudeville was devoted to the detection of sugar in the urine of diabetic patients. Retired in 1811 Pierre-François Nicolas died in Caen in 1816.