Nicolas François Rougnon de Magny

Rougnon de Magny was the son of a physician. From the age of 15 or 16 he learned surgery from the staff surgeon Bernier in Besançon, and at the same time attended the university. He became a licentiate in 1749, and subsequently began practicing medicine in his native town, under the supervision of his father. In 1750 he went to Paris for further education, and then settled in Noyon in northern France, where he practiced medicine together with his uncle Richard, a physicin of some repute.

In 1752 Rougnon de Magny unsuccessfully participated in a concours for a chair in Besançon. Later, however, in 1759, he was appointed to this chair, which he held for almost forty years, until his death in 1799. During the years 1753 to 1792 he was also amployed as a physician in various civilian and military hospitals in Besançon.

• Codex physiologicus. Besançon, 1776.
• Considerationes pathologico-semiotica de omnibus humani corporis functionibus.
  Besançon, 1786-1788; German translation, Leipzig, 1793.
• Médecine préservatrice et curative . . . ou Traité d’hygiène et de médecine pratique.
  2 volumes. Besançon and Paris, 1799.
• Lettre de M. Rougnon à M. Lorry touchant les causes de la mort de feu Monsieur Charles, ancien capitaine de cavalerie, arrivé à Besançon le 23 fevrier 1768. Besançon, J. F. Charmet, 1768.
  In 1808 Jean-Baptiste-Timothé Baumès (1756-1828) presented this letter in the Annales de la Société de médecine de Montpellier as a report of the first known case of angina pectoris. The patient, however, did not suffer from angina pectoris, but from emphysema of the lungs and heart dilatation. Rougnon de Magny himself in the disturbance saw only a case of severe dyspnoe.
• Hans Kohn:
  Zur Geschichte d. Angina pectoris: Heberden oder Rougnon?
  Zeitschrift für klinische Medizin, Berlin, 1927, 106: 1-20.
• Isidor Fischer (1868-1943):
  Die Eigennahmen in der Krankheitsterminologie.
  Vienna and Leipzig, M. Perles, 1931, pp. 119-121.