Ernest Henri Besnier (; 21 April 1831 – 15 May 1909, Paris) was a French

dermatologist Dermatology is the branch of medicine dealing with the skin.''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.'' Random House, Inc. 2001. Page 537. . It is a speciality with both medical and surgical aspects. A dermatologist is a specialist medi ...

and medical director of the

Hôpital Saint-Louis Hôpital Saint-Louis () is a hospital in Paris, France. It was built in 1611 by architect Claude Vellefaux at the request of Henry IV of France. It is part of the Assistance publique - Hôpitaux de Paris hospital system, and it is located at 1 a ...

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 ...

Early life

Ernest Besnier was born on 21 April 1831 in

Honfleur Honfleur () is a commune in the Calvados department in northwestern France. It is located on the southern bank of the estuary of the Seine across from Le Havre and very close to the exit of the Pont de Normandie. The people that inhabit Hon ...

, département

Calvados Calvados (, , ) is a brandy from Normandy in France, made from apples and/or pears. History In France Apple orchards and brewers are mentioned as far back as the 8th century by Charlemagne. The first known record of Norman distillation was ma ...

. He studied medicine in

, where in 1857 he received his medical doctorate.

Career

In 1863, Besnier became ''médecin des hôpitaux''. He succeeded Pierre-Antoine-Ernest Bazin as director at the Hôpital Saint Louis. He built

histopathology Histopathology (compound of three Greek words: 'tissue', 'suffering', and '' -logia'' 'study of') is the microscopic examination of tissue in order to study the manifestations of disease. Specifically, in clinical medicine, histopatholog ...

and

parasitology Parasitology is the study of parasites, their host (biology), hosts, and the relationship between them. As a List of biology disciplines, biological discipline, the scope of parasitology is not determined by the organism or environment in questio ...

laboratories at the hospital, and is credited with originating the term

biopsy A biopsy is a medical test commonly performed by a surgeon, interventional radiologist, an interventional radiologist, or an interventional cardiology, interventional cardiologist. The process involves the extraction of sampling (medicine), sample ...

for tissue samples. In 1889 he proved an early description of skin lesions associated with

sarcoidosis Sarcoidosis (; also known as Besnier–Boeck–Schaumann disease) is a disease involving abnormal collections of White blood cell, inflammatory cells that form lumps known as granulomata. The disease usually begins in the lungs, skin, or lymph n ...

, introducing the name " lupus pernio". With Pierre Adolphe Adrien Doyon (1827–1907), he founded the medical journal ''Annales de dermatologie et de syphiligraphie''. Besnier attempted to balance the differences between the French and Viennese approaches to dermatological medicine, and in 1881 with Doyon, translated

Moritz Kaposi Moritz Kaposi (, ; 23 October 1837 – 6 March 1902) was a physician and dermatologist from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who discovered the skin tumor that received his name (Kaposi's sarcoma). Biography Early life and name Born in Kaposvár, ...

's famous book on skin diseases (''Pathologie und Therapie der Hautkrankheiten in Vorlesungen für praktische Ärzte und Studirende'') from German into French (''Leçons sur les maladies de la peau''). With

Louis-Anne-Jean Brocq Louis-Anne-Jean Brocq (; 1 February 1856 – 18 December 1928) was a French dermatologist born in Laroque-Timbaut, a village in the department of Lot-et-Garonne. He practiced medicine in Paris at the Hospice la Rochefoucauld, the Hôpital Broca, ...

and Lucien Jacquet, he published a four volume encyclopedia of dermatology, titled "''La pratique dermatologique''" (1900–04).

Death and legacy

Besnier died in Paris on 15 May 1909. The eponymous Besnier's prurigo is named for a skin disorder that often follows infantile

atopic dermatitis Atopic dermatitis (AD), also known as atopic eczema, is a long-term type of inflammation of the skin. Atopic dermatitis is also often called simply eczema but the same term is also used to refer to dermatitis, the larger group of skin conditi ...

.Besnier's prurigo
at

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 ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Besnier, Ernest Henri 1831 births 1909 deaths People from Honfleur French dermatologists 19th-century French physicians 20th-century French physicians Officers of the Legion of Honour