Philibert Joseph Roux

Philibert Joseph Roux

Philibert Joseph Roux (born April 26, 1780 in Auxerre , † March 23, 1854 in Paris ) was a French medic and surgeon .

Life

Philibert's father Jacques Roux, a practicing surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu and at the Auxerre Military Academy , sent him to the Benedictine- run military academy to study civil engineering . Due to the careless nature of his son, he soon abandoned this plan and took Philibert with him to the surgical ward. However, the son showed little interest there either and only dreamed of leaving Auxerre. In 1796, during the First Coalition War , his father advised him to join the army. PJ Roux received a position there as a third-class medical officer for the Sambre and Maas Army , which moved to Andernach in the Rhineland . After a short stay in this garrison, he was sent to the Aachen military hospital , where he was assigned to the rescue service. After the Peace of Campo Formio on October 17, 1797, the demobilization took place and Philibert returned to his family.

However, his father continued to urge him to study medicine in Paris. In 1850 the Hôpital d'instruction des armées du Val-de-Grâce was founded, but Roux failed the entrance exam there. He then attended the courses at the École de médecine de Paris and the public anatomy lectures of Marie François Xavier Bichat , whose pupil, admirer and friend he became. After a relevant position became vacant, he enthusiastically worked as a dissector for Bichat.

After the death of Xavier Bichat on July 22, 1802, he took over his lectures in anatomy, physiology and operative surgery. He did an autopsy at Bichat, opened a theater of anatomy and taught operative surgery in the monastery of Saint-Jean de Beauvais, cloître Saint-Jean de Beauvais , and later also in the Rue de la Huchette .

In 1802 he applied for the position of deputy chief surgeon, chirurgien de deuxième classe at the Hôtel-Dieu . However, the position was awarded to his competitor Guillaume Dupuytren .

In 1803 he defended his dissertation entitled Coup d'oeil physiologique sur les sécrétions . In 1807 he became a second class surgeon at the Beaujon Hospital, Hôpital Beaujon in Clichy (Hauts-de-Seine), three years later in 1810 he married the daughter of Alexis Boyer . Adelaide Boyer was the eldest daughter of the Paris surgeon Alexis Boyer and was previously engaged to Guillaume Dupuytren.

When Raphaël Bienvenu Sabatier died in 1811, his chair became vacant. Ph.J. Roux presented himself together with the three other candidates, AE Tartra, Guillaume Dupuytren and Jean-Nicolas Marjolin (1780-1850), for this position. The selection committee consisted of Philippe-Jean Pelletan (1747–1829), Antoine Dubois (1756–1837), Pierre-François Percy (1754–1825) and Anthelme Richerand . On February 10, 1812, Guillaume Dupuytren was unanimously appointed Professor of Operative Surgery. Ph.J. Roux was able to build its professional reputation through a publication on the treatment of bone diseases - more precisely joint diseases - through resection and amputation. In 1813 his textbook on surgery appeared. In August 1814 he traveled to London for a month for further training , where he found out about the progress made in surgery there. In 1820 he was finally appointed professor of surgery and in 1835 - after the death of Guillaume Dupuytren - he was his successor at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris.

In September 1819 he successfully operated on a cleft palate on an English student. Anthelme Richerand attacked him for this in a polemical way. As a result of this successful operation (staphylorrhotherapy), the publication Mémoire sur la staphyloraphie, ou, Suture du voile du palais was published in 1825 . The closure of a soft cleft palate (see soft palate ) was first carried out in 1816 by the Berlin surgeon Carl Ferdinand von Graefe (1787–1840). Technically, Graefe freshened the edges of the crevices by etching them in order to sew them up. This procedure was only successful in one case. Ph.J. Roux changed the technique so that he surgically freshened the split margins and then adapted them to the seam. He managed to unite the cleft soft palate in around 90 patients.

In addition to his extensive surgical practice, he also dealt with ophthalmology and further developed surgical ophthalmology. In a message to the Paris Academy of Sciences ( Academy of Sciences ) in 1817. He reported on the surgical treatment of gray Stars ( cataract ). He has operated on more than 700 patients with a success rate of seventy. In 1853 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . Since 1834 he was a member of the Académie des sciences.

Works (selection)

• Coup d'oeil physiologique sur les secretions. Feugueray Paris, (1803)
• Melanges de chirurgie et de physiologie. Mequignon Paris, (1809)
• Mémoire sur la staphyloraphie, ou, Suture du voile du palais. Chaudé Paris, (1825)
• Quarante années de pratique chirurgicale. Victor Masson, Paris (1854, PDF )

literature

• Medical times and gazette . A journal of medical science, literature, criticism, and news. Vol. 12 London
• Villey, R .; Brunet, F .; Valette, G; et al .: Histoire de la Médicine, de la Pharmacie, de l'Art Dentaire Vétérinaire. Albin Michel-Laffont-Tchou, Paris (1978).
• Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Roux, Philibert Joseph. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1271.

Web links

Commons : Philibert Joseph Roux  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Louis Hersent (1777-1860) French painter: the dying Marie Francois Xavier Bichat surrounded by Esparon and Philibert Joseph Roux [2]
• Short biography in French [3]

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Genealogy of the Boyer [1]
2. ↑ Member entry of Philibert Joseph Roux at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on May 2, 2016.
3. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter R. Académie des sciences, accessed on February 23, 2020 (French).