Pierre Barrère
Pierre Barrère was a French physician and naturalist. Barrère practised in Perpignan from 1717. His thesis on medical botany brought him into contact with Antoine de Jussieu who helped him become a naval surgeon. In 1722, he voyaged to Cayenne where he stayed for five years. Back in Perpignan, he became professor of botany at the university and doctor in the military hospital. The plant genus Barreria was named after him but it is now a synonym of Brunia. He is commemorated in Vanilla barrereana.
Ornithology
In 1745 he published his Ornithologiae Specimen Novum, sive Series Avium in Ruscinone, Pyrenaeis Montibus, atque in Galliâ Aequinoctiali Observatarum, in Classes, genera & species, novâ methodo, digesta at Perpignan.His classification, entirely based on the form of the beak and feet, divided the birds into four groups : les palmipèdes, les demi-palmipèdes, les fissipèdes et les demi-fissipèdes. Within these groups there was no rank above genera and species and these were more or less disordered. His very artificial classification was soon abandoned. The work was dedicated to Buffon.
Medicine
Barrère published Observations anatomiques tirées des ouvertures d’un grand nombre de cadavres in 1753 at Perpignan.As anonymous the Dissertation sur la cause physique de la couleur des nègres, de la qualité de leurs cheveux, et de la dégénération de l’un et de l’autre, Paris, chez Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1741. He claimed, based on cadaver dissections, that the bile of black people was black.