Jean-Baptiste Bécœur
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Jean-Baptiste Bécœur (16 April 1718, Metz, France – 16 September 1777) was a French ornithologist.
Bécœur's parents were well-placed. His father, François Bécœur, was an apothecary, his mother, Anne Vaucremont, was the daughter of a doctor. He studied pharmacy first with his father and then in Germany, and finally in Paris where he attended the courses of Antoine de Jussieu. He then returned to Metz.
He was initially interested in
His method of conservation was based on arsenic, but he died without publishing the recipe for his arsenical soap. It appeared again early in the 19th century in publications by Daudin and Dufresne, who were connected with the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Bécoeur's secret had been handed over to François Levaillant (1753–1828), who sold the recipe together with his collection of animals and plants to the French government in 1797.[1] The arsenical soap remained in widespread usage until the 1950s.
Bécoeur was an associate of
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