French surgeon and inventor
Claude Pouteau (born August 14, 1724, in Lyon, and died February 10, 1775, in the same city) was a French surgeon and inventor.
Biography.
Claude Pouteau was the son of a surgeon, from whom he received his first medical education. He then studied in Paris, where he had as masters Jean-Louis Petit, Henri François Le Dran and Sauveur François Morand. Once his thesis was defended, he returned to Lyon, where he was appointed junior surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu in 1744. He succeeded Pierre Grassot as major surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu and continued, like the latter, to promote vaccination against smallpox. In 1753 he turned to private practice, where he was very successful.
In 1755 he was made a member of the Academy of Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Lyon.
Pouteau was a very human doctor. For example, he put an end to the lithotomy operations performed in a row (the spectators saw several operations, but the patients were waiting amidst the cries of those who preceded them). Yet it was Pouteau who, for his use of fire, was accused of cruelty by its competitors.
He died of a skull fracture following a fall.
Contributions.
Observations.
Pouteau made numerous observations on cancer, on fire in the treatment of rheumatism and other diseases, on the properties of the pores of the skin, on pulmonary tuberculosis and on the rickets.
Asepsis before the letter.
A century before Ignaz Semmelweis, Pouteau understood that, in hospitals, infection was not transmitted only through the air, but through direct contact with the surgeon's hands, dressings and instruments. and he deduced asepsis measures.
It's not just the unsanitary air that he blames for cases of gangrene or "pourriture d'hôpital" ("hospital rot") (which often turned minor injuries into serious disabilities). Against what he calls the "gangrenous virus", he prescribes:
Forearm fractures.
Pouteau described a wide variety of forearm fractures. It is sometimes said that he was the first to describe the Colles' fracture (which is sometimes called the Pouteau-Colles fracture), but, according to P. Liverneaux, it is not the case.
Iconography.
Notes and references.
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