Jean-Jacques Belloc (1730 in Saint-Maurin in

Quercy Quercy (; , locally ) is a former province of France located in the country's southwest, bounded on the north by Limousin, on the west by Périgord and Agenais, on the south by Gascony and Languedoc, and on the east by Rouergue and Auverg ...

– October 23, 1807, in

Agen Agen (, , ) is the prefecture of the Lot-et-Garonne department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Southwestern France. It lies on the river Garonne, southeast of Bordeaux. In 2021, the commune had a population of 32,485. Geography The city of Agen l ...

) was a French surgeon and creator of

forensic medicine Forensic medicine is a broad term used to describe a group of medical specialties which deal with the examination and diagnosis of individuals who have been injured by or who have died because of external or unnatural causes such as poisoning, assa ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

Biography

He was a son of a surgeon, he was a pupil of the college of Montpellier then studied medicine and surgery 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 ...

, then at the Faculty of Medicine of

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 received his master in surgery in

in 1754 and in spite of his titles of lieutenant of the first surgeon of the King and professor of legal medicine, he had settled in

in 1768 and had founded there, in the old tower of Saint-Côme, in next to the large cemetery of Sainte-Foy, a school of surgery which flourished until the revolution. There he autopsied corpses that he dug up with the help of his students. He invented several surgical instruments, including the probe that bears his name (Belloc probe or cannula). Rightly considered as the creator in

of forensic medicine, Belloc is the author of numerous memoirs, notably on animal magnetism and smallpox, which he had made his specialty.

Publications

* ''Physical, philosophical and medical topography of the department of Lot-et-Garonne'' , Agen, 1806 * ''Course in judicial, theoretical and practical forensic medicine'' Paris: impr. of the Society of Medicine, (year IX , 1811, 1819) FRBNF30080952

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Belloc, Jean-Jacques 1730 births 1807 deaths 18th-century French physicians 17th-century French physicians University of Montpellier alumni