André Chantemesse

André Chantemesse (23 October 1851 - 25 February 1919) was a French bacteriologist born in Puy-en-Velay.

From 1880 to 1885 he served as interne des hôpitaux in Paris, earning his doctorate in 1884 with a dissertation on tuberculous meningitis titled Étude sur la méningite tuberculeuse de l'adulte : les formes anormales en particulier. In 1885 he traveled to Berlin to study bacteriology at the laboratory of Robert Koch (1843-1910). After his return to Paris, he became associated with the work of Louis Pasteur.

In 1886 he began extensive research of typhoid fever. In collaboration with Georges-Fernand Widal (1862-1929), he studied the aetiology of the disease, and in 1888 developed an experimental serodiagnostic inoculation. With Widal, he also isolated the bacillus that was the cause of dysentery, however the two scientists were unable to establish the aetiological link to the disease.

From 1897 to 1903 he was a professor of comparative and experimental pathology in Paris, becoming a member of the Académie de Médecine in 1901. In 1904 he became a member of the editorial board of Annales de l'Institut Pasteur.

Selected works

• De l’immunité contre le virus de la fièvre typhoïde conférée par des substances solubles. (with Georges-Fernand Widal; Annales de l’Institut Pasteur, Paris, 1888, 2: 54-59. Experimental antityphoid inoculation).
• Sur les microbes de la dysentérie épidémique. Bulletin de l’Académie de médecine, Paris, 1888, 19: 522-529.
• Bibliothèque de la Tuberculose. 1910, a collection of monographs devoted to tuberculosis, with Antonin Poncet & Frédéric Justin Collet.

See also

• Widal test

References

• Portail Institut Pasteur (chrononological biography).