QUESNAY, François.

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Essai physique sur l'oeconomie animale; First edition of Quesnay's Physical Essay on Animal Economy, which lays the physiological and philosophical foundations for the economic doctrine as formalized in the Tableau économique. It is bound with a first edition of another early medical text by Quesnay. Together, they support the recent re-evaluation of Quesnay's medical oeuvre as integral to the development of his later economic thought.Formulating a key Physiocratic analysis of the nature and behaviour of economic agents, the Essai was relatively overlooked by economic historians throughout the 19th century. It was more frequently aligned with medical texts, a categorization evidenced by the current volume, in which it has been contemporaneously bound with the first edition of Quesnay's The Art of Healing by Bloodletting, published by Cavelier in the same year. The French economist Charles Gide, however, noted that: "Dr Quesnay, through his medical studies on 'the animal economy' and on the circulation of the blood, has duly been found oriented in this direction; [whence] social economy might well have appeared to him, just like animal economy, as a sort of physiology. Moreover, from 'physiology' to 'physiocracy' is not a very far step" (quoted in Nitsch, p. 6). This link has strengthened over time in critical discourse: Banzhaf remarks that "Quesnay's medical writings, which are from the early part of his career, provide insight into his paradigms and methodology, helping she

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