Eugène Bouchut (; 18 May 1818 – 26 November 1891) was a French
physician
A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the Medical education, study, Med ...
born 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 made significant contributions in several medical fields, including
pediatrics
Pediatrics (American English) also spelled paediatrics (British English), is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, Adolescence, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, pediatrics covers many o ...
,
laryngology
Laryngology is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders, diseases and Trauma (medicine), injuries of the larynx, colloquially known as the voice box. Laryngologists treat disorders of the larynx, including diseases that affects the voice, swa ...
,
neurology
Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix wikt:-logia, -logia, "study of") is the branch of specialty (medicine) , medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous syst ...
and
ophthalmology
Ophthalmology (, ) is the branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis, treatment, and surgery of eye diseases and disorders.
An ophthalmologist is a physician who undergoes subspecialty training in medical and surgical eye care. Following a ...
.
Career
Bouchut obtained his
doctorate in medicine
A Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated MD, from the Latin language, Latin ) is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the ''MD'' denotes a professional degree of ph ...
in Paris in 1843. Soon afterwards, he became ''Chef de clinique'' at the
Hôtel-Dieu de Paris In French-speaking countries, a hôtel-Dieu () was originally a hospital for the poor and needy, run by the Catholic Church. Nowadays these buildings or institutions have either kept their function as a hospital, the one in Paris being the oldest an ...
. In 1852, he became a member of the medical staff at the
Hôpital Bon Secours, and later at the
Hôpital Sainte-Eugenie and the
Hôpital Necker-Enfants Malades. He taught at the
École pratique des hautes études
The (), abbreviated EPHE, is a French postgraduate top level educational institution, a .
EPHE is a constituent college of the Université PSL (together with ENS Ulm, Paris Dauphine or Ecole des Mines). The college is closely linked to É ...
and Hôpital Sainte-Eugenie, and in 1857 and 1859 he substituted for
André Duméril (1774–1860) at the
Faculté de Médecine.
Notable achievements
In 1858, Bouchut developed a new technique for non-surgical
orotracheal intubation to bypass obstruction of the
larynx
The larynx (), commonly called the voice box, is an organ (anatomy), organ in the top of the neck involved in breathing, producing sound and protecting the trachea against food aspiration. The opening of larynx into pharynx known as the laryngeal ...
resulting from a
diphtheria
Diphtheria is an infection caused by the bacteria, bacterium ''Corynebacterium diphtheriae''. Most infections are asymptomatic or have a mild Course (medicine), clinical course, but in some outbreaks, the mortality rate approaches 10%. Signs a ...
-related pseudomembrane.
His method involved introducing a small straight metal tube into the larynx, securing it by means of a silk thread and leaving it there for a few days until the pseudomembrane and
airway
The respiratory tract is the subdivision of the respiratory system involved with the process of conducting air to the alveoli for the purposes of gas exchange in mammals. The respiratory tract is lined with respiratory epithelium as respiratory ...
obstruction had resolved sufficiently.
Bouchut presented this experimental technique along with the results he had achieved in the first seven cases at the
Académie des Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...
conference on 18 September 1858.
[ The members of the Academy initially rejected Bouchut's ideas, largely as a result of highly critical and negative remarks made by the influential ]Armand Trousseau
Armand Trousseau (; 14 October 1801 – 23 June 1867) was a French internist. His contributions to medicine include Trousseau sign of malignancy, Trousseau sign of latent tetany, Trousseau–Lallemand bodies (an archaic synonym for Bence ...
.trachea
The trachea (: tracheae or tracheas), also known as the windpipe, is a cartilaginous tube that connects the larynx to the bronchi of the lungs, allowing the passage of air, and so is present in almost all animals' lungs. The trachea extends from ...
, as an alternative to tracheotomy
Tracheotomy (, ), or tracheostomy, is a surgical airway management procedure which consists of making an incision on the front of the neck to open a direct airway to the trachea. The resulting stoma (hole) can serve independently as an airway ...
in cases of diphtheria.
Bouchut was also among the first practitioners of "cerebroscopy" (now referred to as ophthalmoscopy
Ophthalmoscopy, also called funduscopy, is a test that allows a health professional to see inside the fundus of the eye and other structures using an ophthalmoscope (or funduscope). It is done as part of an eye examination and may be done as part ...
), a technique used for examining the interior of the eye for diagnosis of brain disorders such as meningitis
Meningitis is acute or chronic inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, collectively called the meninges. The most common symptoms are fever, intense headache, vomiting and neck stiffness and occasion ...
.
Publications
Bouchut published a number of works on pediatrics, and was the author of an important book on acute and chronic neurasthenia
Neurasthenia ( and () 'weak') is a term that was first used as early as 1829 for a mechanical weakness of the nerves. It became a major diagnosis in North America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries after neurologist Georg ...
titled ''De l'État nerveux aigu et chronique, ou nervosisme''. He also published ''Traité des signes de la mort et des moyens de prévenir les enterrements prématurés'', a treatise concerning the prevention of premature burials, which won an award from the Académie des sciences in 1846.Stethoscopes
Death, the Last Taboo
See also
*
History of tracheal intubation Tracheal intubation (usually simply referred to as intubation), an Invasiveness of surgical procedures, invasive medical procedure, is the placement of a flexible plastic catheter into the vertebrate trachea, trachea. For millennia, tracheotomy was ...
References
External links
Tracheotomy versus Intubation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bouchut, Eugene
19th-century French physicians
French pediatricians
1818 births
1891 deaths
Physicians from Paris