Genus Sponia

For Jacob (Jacques) Spon (1647–1685), French physician, archaeologist, antiquarian and traveller. He studied medicine at Strasbourg and Montpellier, graduating in 1668 and practiced in Lyon focusing on wealthy clientele. He developed an interest in classical antiquity and his Recherche des Antiquités et Curiosités de la Ville de Lyon (1668) launched him into a wider circle of erudite scholars, philosophers and theologians. Between 1675 and 1676, he travelled to Italy, Greece, (modern) Turkey, and the Levant with Sir George Wheeler (1650–1723), collecting coins, inscriptions and manuscripts and the like, as described in Voyage d’Italie, de Dalmatie, de Grèce et du Levant (1678). Before his early death from tuberculosis, he authored many papers, such as Récherches Curieuses d’Antiquité (1683).