Leclerc Henri

Born: October 5, 1870 - Died: March 15, 1955Born in Paris, Henri Leclerc (1870-1955) was a French physician and author. He introduced the term phytotherapy into medical science as a scientifically oriented continuation of the pre-scientific "herbal medicine" practiced until then.

Henri Leclerc attended the Lycée Henri-IV in the Rue Clovis in Paris. His "godfather" Jean-Baptiste-Onésime DUPONT, Agrégé des Lettres, an anti-clerical freemason who had been a councillor of the short-lived "City of Paris" under the short-lived "Second Republic" of 1848, initiated him into Latin and Greek "script" as well as Hebrew. He was also, but only later, an "officer" in Paris with the "Benedictines" in the Rue Monsieur ("whose admirable liturgy was combined with heavenly music"). In 1895, he obtained a doctorate in medicine. He settled as a doctor in Chars in 1896. From 1908 he worked as a doctor in Paris. In his practice, he used medical-botanical recipes from old works after validating them. Eric Frederick William Powell introduced the term phytotherapy in English in 1934 and Rudolf Fritz Weiss in German a little later.

Leclerc published numerous articles in the journal La Presse Médicale, which led to his book Précis de phytothérapie, published in 1922. He distinguished between scientifically oriented phytotherapy and traditional herbal medicine. Henri Leclerc is regarded as a great technician and historian of herbs and phytotherapy. In 1937, he founded the "Revue de Phytothérapie", the official journal of the French Society of Phytotherapy. This journal dedicates an obituary to him, written by his grandson, Dr. Roger Verley.

1. Précis de phytothérapie: essais de thérapeutique par les plantes françaises. Elsevier Masson, 1999. first edition 1922. ISBN 2-225-85870-5
2. L'Aubépine: "Cratoegus oxycantha". Son histoire, ses propriétés thérapeutiques. Monnoyer, 1922.