Charles Marie Benjamin Rouget (19 August 1824 – 1904, Paris) was a French

physiologist Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out chemical and ...

born in Gisors, Eure. He studied at the

Collège Sainte-Barbe The Collège Sainte-Barbe () is a former college in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, France. The Collège Sainte-Barbe was founded in 1460 on Montagne Sainte-Geneviève ( Latin Quarter, Paris). It was until its closure in June 1999 the "oldest ...

with medical training at hospitals in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. He was later a professor of physiology at the

University of Montpellier The University of Montpellier () is a public university, public research university located in Montpellier, in south-east of France. Established in 1220, the University of Montpellier is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous opera ...

(1860). From 1879 to 1893, he was a professor of physiology at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Rouget is largely remembered for his correlation of physiology to microscopic

anatomical Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...

structure. He was the first to discover the branching contractile cells on the external wall of the

capillaries A capillary is a small blood vessel, from 5 to 10 micrometres in diameter, and is part of the microcirculation system. Capillaries are microvessels and the smallest blood vessels in the body. They are composed of only the tunica intima (the in ...

amphibian Amphibians are ectothermic, anamniote, anamniotic, tetrapod, four-limbed vertebrate animals that constitute the class (biology), class Amphibia. In its broadest sense, it is a paraphyletic group encompassing all Tetrapod, tetrapods, but excl ...

s, structures that are now known as " Rouget cells".The Inflammatory Process
edited by Benjamin W. Zweifach, Lester Grant, Robert T. McCluskey Also the eponymous "Rouget's muscle" was described by him, which are circular fibers of the

ciliary muscle The ciliary muscle is an intrinsic muscle of the eye formed as a ring of smooth muscleSchachar, Ronald A. (2012). "Anatomy and Physiology." (Chapter 4) . in the eye's middle layer, the uvea ( vascular layer). It controls accommodation for vie ...

of the eye. These fibers are sometimes called " Müller's muscle" after German anatomist Heinrich Müller (1820–1864).

References

''Charles Marie Benjamin Rouget''
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Who Named It ''Whonamedit?'' is an online English-language dictionary of medical eponyms and the people associated with their identification. Though it is a dictionary, many eponyms and persons are presented in extensive articles with comprehensive bibliograp ...

1824 births 1904 deaths People from Eure French physiologists Academic staff of the University of Montpellier {{france-med-bio-stub