QUESNAY, FRAxgots (1694-1774). A French economist, born at Mere. He first distinguished himself as a surgeon and physician. His Observations sur les cffcts de la saignee (1730). in which he success fully opposed the theories of bleeding of the leading contemporary authority, led to his selection as secretary of the Academy of Sur gery at Paris. Defective eyesight compelled him to abandon surgery for medicine. In 1749 he became physician to Madame de Pompadour. and he was appointed physician to the King in 1752. This position gave him leisure for philosophical and economic study, and in 1756 he published in the Encyclopc'die articles on "Fermiers" and "Grains," in which he correctly analyzed the deficiencies of French agriculture, and advocated the adoption of capitalistic methods in farming and the abolition of the vexatious taxes and restrictions which were impoverishing French agriculture. In these articles Quesnay advanced the doctrine that the sole source of national wealth is the surplus of agriculture, the produit net. (See PuystocaAm.) In 1758 be published
his Tableau wconomique, a work which disap peared in the early nineteenth century, but was found in 1890, and reproduced in facsimile at London in 1S94. Its purpose was to make in telligible at a glance the dependence of a nation's wealth upon the produit act. Quesnay published several minor economic works, which, however, added nothing to the doctrines of the Tableau. His thief influence upon economic thought was exercised through his disciples. who formed the sect afterwards known as the 'Phvsioerats' (q.v.). Quesnay's works were collected and pub lished in 1768 by Dupont Nemours, under the title of Physiocratie. Consult: Higgs, The Phys ioerats (London. 1897) ; Oncken, tEurres ("To 710111iVICS et philosophiques de Quesnay (Frank fort, 1888).