AIGNAN, FRANÇOIS. — The former Capuchin missionary Fr. Tranquillo d'Orléans (père Tranquille), born in 1644, who joined the Cluniac Benedictines around 1690 and died in 1709, was known as abbé A. As a Capuchin, together with his confrere Fr. Enrico da Montbazon (later abbé Rousseau), he directed a pharmaceutical laboratory in the Louvre palace on the orders of King Luigi
XIV. In order to practise their art more freely, they became Benedictines; both at the Louvre and in the abbey of St
Germain-des-Prés they distributed free of charge to the poor the medicines they prepared, which were eagerly sought after even by the nobility. A. became famous for preparing a drug still known today as « Tranquil balm », composed of solanum racemosum, furiosum maniacum, poppy heads, henbane, mint, tobacco, rue, wormwood, hyssop, etc., and a large freshly killed toad. This balm enjoyed immense popularity; it was also administered to Luigi XIV on the eve of his death. M.me de Sévigné regarded it as a sovereign remedy, useful against all diseases. « Tranquil balm » has survived to the present day, though without the toad ingredient, as a local anaesthetic (cf. M. Messini, Terapia clinica, 1944).Under the name of abbé A. he published several works on medicine: Le prestre médicin, ou Discours physique sur l'établissement de la médecine, avec un traité du café et du thé de France, selon le système d'Hippocrate, Paris 1696, with an outline of the history of ecclesiastical medicine, taken from the Historia monogramma of Du Val; L'ancienne médecine à la mode, ou le sentiment uniforme d'Hippocrate et de Galien sur les acides et les alhalis, Paris 1693; Traité de la goutte dans l'état naturel, ou l'art de connaître les vrais principes des maladies, Paris 1707.