Michel Étienne Descourtilz

Michel Étienne Descourtilz (25 November 1775, Boiste near Pithiviers – 1835 or 1836, Paris), was a French physician, botanist and historian of the Haitian Revolution.

[1] In 1799, after completing his medical studies he traveled to Charleston, South Carolina and Santiago, Cuba, arriving in Haiti on 2 April.

[2] Despite a passport from Toussaint Louverture and serving as physician with the forces of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, he was in constant danger.

[2] All his natural history collections and many drawings were destroyed during the course of the revolution.

[citation needed] In 1803 he returned to France, worked as a physician in a hospital at Beaumont and served as president of the Paris Linnean Society.