Étienne Lancereaux

Étienne Lancereaux (born  November 27, 1829 in Brécy-Brières , Département Ardennes , †  October 26, 1910 in Paris ) was a French doctor and diabetologist . He worked at various hospitals in Paris and made important contributions to the understanding of diabetes mellitus , for example to the view that diabetes is a disease of the pancreas , as well as to differentiating between different forms of diabetes. In his later life he was president of the Académie nationale de Médecine .

Life

Étienne Lancereaux

Étienne Lancereaux was in 1829 in the department of Ardennes born and graduated in Reims and Paris to study medicine , graduating 1,862th From 1869 he worked at various hospitals in Paris as Médecin des hôpitaux , a position that was common in Paris at the time and above assistant doctors . In 1872 he became Agrégé (lecturer), but he did not attain an academic chair in his life . In his views and interests he was influenced by the French physiologist Claude Bernard . In contrast to Bernard, however, based on his own pathological-clinical investigations, he took the view that the cause of diabetes mellitus was to be found in the pancreas , and accordingly coined the expression "pancreatic diabetes" in a publication published in 1877. At Lancereaux's request, Bernard agreed to test this thesis experimentally by removing the pancreas from dogs , but died before carrying out appropriate tests. Lancereaux's views were later confirmed by Oskar Minkowski and Josef von Mering .

The distinction between the two main forms of diabetes mellitus that is still valid today goes back to Étienne Lancereaux. In a paper published in 1880 under the title “Le diabete maigre: ses symptomes, son evolution, son prognostie et son traitement”, he named the manifestations of the disease, currently known as type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes, according to their clinical symptoms Diabete maigre ("lean diabetes") and Diabete gras ("fat diabetes"). This makes him an important figure in the historical development of diabetes research . The monthly journal Diabetologia , the most important European science journal in this field, honored him accordingly in 2005 as part of a series of twelve scientists and doctors who were featured on the cover of the journal. For diabetes mellitus with pronounced emaciation (cachexia) in the patient, the term Lancereaux's diabetes is sometimes used.

In addition to diabetes, Étienne Lancereaux's research interests also included alcoholism and syphilis , and he also described contagious forms of jaundice and the transmission of typhoid through water . From 1905 he worked as president of the Académie nationale de Médecine , into which he had been admitted in 1877. He died in Paris in 1910 at the age of 81 of an infection sustained from a knee injury.

Works (selection)

• Traité historique et pratique de la syphilis. Paris 1866.
• with Pierre Lackerbauer: Atlas d'anatomie pathologique. 2 volumes. Paris 1871.
• Traité de l'herpétisme. Paris 1883.
• Traité des maladies du foie et du pancréas. Paris 1899.
• Alcoolisme. Paris 1907.
• Traité de la goutte. Paris 1910.

literature

• Étienne Lancereaux. In: Barry G. Firkin, Judith A. Whitworth: Dictionary of Medical Eponyms. Second edition. Parthenon, Boca Raton 2002, ISBN 1-85070-333-7 , p. 225
• Lancereaux: Diabetes - A Clue that Points to the Pancreas. In: John Malone Howard, Walter Hess: History of the Pancreas. Kluwer, New York 2002, ISBN 0-306-46742-9 , pp. 105-107

Web links

• Constantin Ionescu-Tîrgoviste: Key Figures in the History of Diabetes: Etienne Lancereaux (1829-1910) . In: Diabetologia. 48 (11 )/2005. Title page and biography (English)