Eugène Bouchut

Engraving of French pediatrician Eugène Bouchut, by Henri Brauer.
From Angelo Mariani and Joseph Uzanne (1894). Figures contemporaines tirées de l’Album Mariani, Volume I. Paris:Ernest Flammarion.

Eugène Bouchut (18 May 1818 – 26 November 1891) was a French physician born in Paris. He made significant contributions in several medical fields, including pediatrics, laryngology, neurology and ophthalmology.

Career

Bouchut obtained his doctorate in medicine in Paris in 1843. Soon afterwards, he became Chef de clinique at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. 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 and Hôpital Sainte-Eugenie, and in 1857 and 1859 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 resulting from a diphtheria-related pseudomembrane.^[1] 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 obstruction had resolved sufficiently.^[2] Bouchut presented this experimental technique along with the results he had achieved in the first seven cases at the Académie des Sciences conference on 18 September 1858.^[1] 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.^[3] Undaunted, Bouchut later introduced a set of tubes (Bouchut's tubes) for intubation of the trachea, as an alternative to tracheotomy in cases of diphtheria.

Bouchut was also among the first practitioners of "cerebroscopy" (now referred to as ophthalmoscopy), a technique used for examining the interior of the eye for diagnosis of brain disorders such as meningitis.^[4][5]

Publications

Bouchut published a number of works on pediatrics, and was the author of an important book on acute and chronic neurasthenia 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.^[6]

See also

History of tracheal intubation

References

1. Sperati, G; Felisati, D (2007). "Bouchut, O’Dwyer and laryngeal intubation in patients with croup". Acta Otorhinolaryngolica Italica 27 (6): 320–3. PMC 2640059. PMID 18320839. Retrieved 2010-10-18.
2. Bouchut, E (1858). "D'une nouvelle méthode de traitement du croup par le tubage du larynx" [On a new method of treatment for croup by larynx intubation]. Bulletin de l'Académie Impériale de Médecine (in French) 23: 1160–2. Retrieved 2010-10-18.
3. Trousseau, A (1858). "Du tubage de la glotte et de la trachéotomie" [On intubation of the glottis and tracheotomy]. Bulletin de L'Académie Impériale de Médecine (in French) 23.
4. On the use of the ophthalmoscope in diseases of the nervous system by Thomas Clifford Allbutt
5. viaLibri on "Du diagnostic des maladies du système nerveux par l'ophthalmoscopie".
6. Stethoscopes Death, the Last Taboo

External links

• Tracheotomy versus Intubation