SOUPE, Marie Joseph (soo-pay), French physician, born in Asnieres in 1738; died in Paris in 1794. He studied principally contagious diseases, and presented to the Academy of sciences a memoir in which he asserted that he had discovered the real cause of the plague known as the black cholera, which raged in Europe and Asia in the 14th century. He was surgeon in the Hotel Dieu at Paris when news was received that cholera had broken out in Callao, and at the invitation of the academy Soupe went to Peru to study its effects in 1783. He arrived in Callao when the disease was at its height and the city was nearly deserted by physicians, and, offering his services to the authorities, was appointed a member of the sanitary council. He divided the city into relief wards, and. by pulling down old woo[ten houses and Indian huts in or near the city, contributed to ward off a greater calamity from Callao. Before returning to France he visited Lima and other large cities, went on botanical expeditions in the Andes, and, passing to Chili, collected an herbarium of about 500 medicinal plants (1784-'6). His report to the academy was criticised, as he claimed that cholera was a poisonous blood disease, and suggested as its remedy a treatment by spirits, which he said he had used with great efficacy in Callao. Modern science has in part adopted Soupe's theory, which was in his time strongly opposed. Although he was very popular in Paris, his title of physician to the king caused his arrest and subsequently his death during the reign of terror. His works include " Origine et marche de la peste noire" (Paris, 1779) ; "Le cholera a Callao, son origine, sa marche, ses progres" (1787); "Coup d'ceil sur les plantes medicinales du Perou et du Chili" (1787)" and " Monographie du sang et de ses affections" (1791).