Francois Leuret, a French anatomist, born in Nancy, Dec. 29, 1707, died there, Jan. 6, 1851. At the end of a year after commencing his medical studies, his father being unable to supply him with means of further support, Francois in despair enlisted as a private soldier. His regiment being stationed in France, he attended the lectures of Esquirol. A fellow student procured his discharge from the army, and obtained a situation for him as paid assistant in the insane hospital of Royer-Collard at Chareuton. In a few months he was appointed one of the internes of that institution, and before receiving his degree published several medical essays, one of which received the approval of the academy of sciences. In 1826 he took his degree and returned to Nancy to practise, but in less than a year he went back to Paris, became the assistant of Esquirol, and was installed as editor of the Annates d"Hygiene et de Medecine legale. In 1831 he published an essay on the cholera of that year. In 1832, in connection with two of his friends, he published a series of observations on the frequency of the pulse in the insane, and another on measurements of the head. In 1834 appeared his Fragments psychologiques, a work which gained for him a high reputation.

In 1839 he published Anatomic comparee du systeme nerveux considere dans ses rapports avec l'intelligence, and in 1840 Traitement moral de la folie, which raised him at once to the first rank among modern psychologists, and led to his appointment as director-in-chief of the Bicetre. In Des indications d suivre dans le traitement moral de la folie (1846), some of his earlier opinions were modified.