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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Francois Quesnay Biography QUESNAY, ka'na', FRANÇOIS (1694–1774). A French economist, born at Méré. He first distinguished himself as a surgeon and physician. His Observations sur les effets de la saignée (1730), in which he successfully opposed the theories of bleeding of the leading contemporary authority, led to his selection as secretary of the Academy of Surgery at Paris. Defective eyesight compelled him to abandon surgery for medicine. In 1749 he became physician to Madame de Pompadour, and he was appointed physician to the King in 1752. This position gave him leisure for philosophical and economic study, and in 1756 he published in the Encyclopédie articles on "Fermiers" and "Grains," in which he correctly analyzed the deficiencies of French agriculture and advocated the adoption of capitalistic methods in farming and the abolition of the vexatious taxes and restrictions which were impoverishing French agriculture. In these articles Quesnay advanced the doctrine that the sole source of national wealth is the surplus of agriculture, the produit net. In 1758 he published his Tableau économique, a work which disappeared in the early nineteenth century, but was found in 1890 and reproduced in facsimile at London in 1894. His chief influence upon economic thought was exercised through his disciples, who formed the sect afterward known as the Physiocrats (q.v.). Quesnay's works were collected and published in 1768 by Dupont de Nemours, under the title of Physiocratie. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XIX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 439. |