CONSIDÉRATIONS SUR UN POINT DE GYMNASTIQUE qui intéresse l’hygiène et la thérapeutique, présentées à l’École de médecine de Montpellier. Montpellier: chez G. Izar et A. Ricard, L’an VI de la République [1798].
 
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. 88; engraved vignette on title-page and headpiece; occasional spotting but largely clean and fresh; in contemporary drab interim wrappers.
 
Sole edition of this set of reflections on the medical and therapeutic utility of gymnastics (broadly construed), presented to the Montpellier medical school by the Montauban-born physician François-Thierry Poux (1779-1862).
 
Observing that there was a widely held assumption that all hygiene consisted of was the following of a few rules of temperance, and that all curative methods could be found in pharmacy jars, Poux argues for a more rounded view of health, based not only on the use of exercise but also on music and dance. He criticises the excuse that these methods are not ‘suffisamment éprouvés’ (p.7), arguing that one can only make progress by testing new approaches, but even so proceeds to rally historical evidence of the medical usage of gymnastics and dance in his favour. Poux discusses the use of dance by Greek soldiers to maintain their strength and agility, and its role in Egyptian religious rites, amongst other ancient cults. Authorities from Montesquieu to Plato are cited as attesting to the civic function of dance in early civilisations (as well as the gravity of the subject more generally). Poux echoes these ideas in the first section of the book, connecting the individual’s health with ‘la prospérité et la sureté de l’état’ (p.25). He elaborates the benefits of dance in counterbalancing the effects of ‘la vie sédentaire’ (p.37) on strength, flexibility and posture. The short ‘deuxième section’ is more of a conclusion, in which Poux reaffirms the value of dance as a holistic cure, and stresses that it is the responsibility of doctors to convince unwilling or lazy patients to apply themselves to it. Poux humorously professes in his dedication to his father at the beginning of this volume: ‘Puissiez-vous juger, en lisant cet Écrit, que l’art dont je vante l’utilité, n’est pas celui que je possède le mieux.’ (p.3) The medic nevertheless appears to have remained in sufficiently good health, permitting him to live to the age of eighty-three, after serving both as mayor of Montauban and, very briefly, as a deputy for the Tarn-et-Garonne during the July Monarchy.
 
Outside Continental Europe, OCLC records copies at NYPL, Yale, National Library of Medicine, and the BL.