BOYER, Alexis, a distinguished French surgeon, was born on the 1st of March 1757, at Uzerches in Limousin. His father was in the humble station of a tailor, and the son received the elements of a medical education in the shop of a barber-surgeon in a provincial town. His evident talent induced his friends to procure his removal to Paris, where he had the good fortune to attract the notice of his two distinguished masters, Louis and Dessault; and his unwearied perseverance, his anatomical skill, and finally his dexterity as an operator, became so conspicuous, that at the age of thirty-seven he obtained the appointment of second surgeon to the Hôtel Dieu of Faris, and was elected professor of operative surgery in the École de Santé. This latter appointment he soon exchanged for the chair of clinical surgery,—a department in which his manual dexterity and his admirable lectures on surgical subjects gained him the highest reputation, and introduced him to extensive practice. Perhaps no French surgeon of his time thought or wrote with greater clearness and good sense than Boyer; and while his natural modesty made him distrustful of innovation, and somewhat tenacious of established modes of treatment, he was as judicious in his diagnosis, as cool and skilful in manipulating, as he was cautious in forming his judgment on individual cases. In 1805 Napoleon nominated him imperial family surgeon, and, after the brilliant campaigns of 1806-7, conferred on him the legion of honour, with the title of Baron of the Empire, and a salary of 25,000 francs. On the fall of Napoleon the merits of Boyer secured him the favour of the succeeding sovereigns of France, and he was consultingsurgeon to Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Louis Philippe.

In 1835 he succeeded Deschan1p3 as surgeon-in-chief to the Hôpital de la Charité, and was chosen a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of the Institute of France. From the period of his wife’s death, which he took much to heart, his health declined, and lie died November 23, 1833, at the age of seventy-six.

His two great works are— Traité complet de Γ anatomie, in 4 vols. 8vo, 1797-99, of which a fourth edition appeared in 1815, and Traité des maladies chirurgicales et des operations qui leur conviennent, 11 vols. 8vo, 1814-26. Of this work a new edition (the 5th), with additions by Μ. Ph. Boyer, in 7 vols., was published in 1844-53.

BOYER, Jean Baptiste, an eminent French physician, born at Marseilles in 1693. He devoted along life to the special investigation and treatment of contagious epidemics, with a courage and success which have rarely been surpassed. On the last appearance of the plague in western Europe in 1720, he was one of the physicians sent from Paris by the Government to succour the inhabitants of his native city, then visited by this great calamity. The fearless zeal and ability which he displayed on that occasion procured him a pension and the title of physician in ordinary to the king. Much of his subsequent life was spent in similar expeditions, devoted to philanthropy, wherever pestilential epidemics prevailed; and the value of the services of Boyer were fully acknowledged at Paris, Trêves, Beauvais, Montagne, Brest, and at several places in the Spanish peninsula. He died in 1768.

His best known writings are— Account of the Plague at Marseilles in 1720, and Observations on the Epidemic that prevailed at Beauvais, Paris, 1750.

BOYER, Jean Pierre, a mulatto general, and for some time the President of Hayti, was born at Port-au-Prince in 1776. He joined the negroes in their war of independence, but after the secession of Toussaint ΓOuverture with his party, was compelled to retire to France. He was well received by Napoleon, and obtained a commission in Leclerc’s expedition. After the death of Dessalines, the king of Hayti, Boyer joined Pêtion in proclaiming a republic and resisting Christophe, Dessalines’s successor. He gallantly and successfully defended Port-au-Prince against the negro troops of Christophe,, and on the death of Pétion was named president of the Haytian republic. Two years later the death of Christophe removed his only rival, and he gained almost undisputed possession of the whole island, Absolute power, however, produced its usual effects; Boyer became arbitrary, capricious, and cruel. In 1825 the French compelled the Hay tian senate to acknowledge their supremacy, and to guarantee a payment of 150 millions of francs in return for certain liberties granted. The weight of this enormous debt excited the greatest discontent in Hayti. Boyer was able to carry on his government for some years longer, but in 1842 a violent insurrection overthrew his power, and compelled him to take refuge in Jamaica. He resided there till 1848, when he removed to Paris, where he died in 1850.