Book excerpt: Surgeon (Jean Baptiste) Henri Savigny (1793-1843) was the author of Observations sur les Effets de la Faim et de la Soif (1818) and along with engineergeographer Alexandre Correard (1788-1857) wrote Naufrage de la Fregate 'La Meduse' (1817), which was first published in English as Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 (1818). The Medusa was a French frigate which was shipwrecked on July 2, 1816 on the bank of Arguin, off the coasts of Mauritania, leaving 390 dead and 15 survivors, of which 5 died before their transfer to Saint-Louis in Senegal. Naufrage de la Fregate 'La Meduse'/ Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal is the testimony of two of the survivors: Alexandre Correard and Jean-Baptiste Henri Savigny.