BARTHEZ or BARTHES PAUL JOSEPH French physician, was born on Dec. II, 1734, at Montpellier. He began the study of medicine at Montpellier in 1750, taking his doctor's degree in 1753. In 1759 he obtained a medical professor ship at Montpellier, and in 1774 he was created joint chancellor of the university. In 1778 he published his most famous work, Nouveaux elernens de la science de l'homme, in which he employs the expression "vital principle" as a convenient term for the cause of the phenomena of life.
On the outbreak of the French Revolution he was settled in Paris, being consulting physician to Louis XVI. He lost much of his fortune and retired to Carcassonne, where he devoted himself to the study of theoretical medicine and wrote his Nouvelle mecanique des inouveinents de l'homme et des animaux (1798). In 5802 he published his Traitement des maladies goutteuses. He died in Paris on Oct. 15, 1806. He bequeathed his books and manuscripts to J. Lordat, who published two volumes of his Consultations de medecine in 181o.