Jean Guillaume Auguste Lugol (1788-1851): his life and his works: a brief encounter, 150 years after his death

• Published in: Histoire des sciences médicales Vol. 36; no. 4; pp. 451 - 464
• Main Author: Neuzil, Eugène
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: French
• Published: France 01.10.2002
• Subjects: France; History of medicine; History, 18th Century; History, 19th Century; Hospitals - history; Iodine - history; Lugol; Physicians - history; France
• ISSN: 0440-8888

J.G.A. Lugol was born on August 18th, 1788 at Montauban. Medical student in Paris, he was admitted as an intern of the hospital 1807. Medical doctor in 1812, he was appointed acting physician at Saint-Louis hospital of Paris in 1819 and named head of a department in the same establishment, a post he held till he retired in 1851. After his death on September 16th, 1851 at Neuilly-sur-Seine, his elder child, his daughter Adèle-Augustine, married Paul Broca in 1857. French pioneer of iodine therapy, Lugol is famous for his iodine-iodurretted solution, still registered in the French Codex and present in most foreign Pharmacopoeia, and also for his four books on scrofulous diseases and their treatment (1829, 1830, 1831, 1834) These publications gather a wealth of the detailed observations of an excellent practitioner who constantly proved a great independence of spirit towards some medical concepts "à la mode", especially those sustained by Broussais. He was very close to his patients and to his medical students, who admired the quality of his lessons, the efficiency of his therapeutic innovations, his intellectual uprightness as well as his success in private practice.