19th-century French physicians

Paul Marie Oudin (1851–1923) was a French physician and medical researcher. He was born, and later died, in Épinal. He conducted research in the Victorian era medical field of high frequency electrotherapy, the application of radio frequency electric currents to the body, and collaborated with the founder of the field, pioneering physiologist and biophysicist Dr. Jacques Arsene d'Arsonval. In 1893 he modified d'Arsonval's electrotherapy equipment by the addition of a wire coil resonator to produce higher potentials, inventing the Oudin coil. This device, very similar to a Tesla coil, could produce very high voltages from several hundred thousand to a million volts. In use, the brush discharges from a pointed electrode attached to the high voltage terminal of the coil would be played over various parts of the body to treat a variety of medical conditions. The Oudin coil was used in electrotherapy and diathermy through the 1920s.

François Merry Delabost (29 August 1836 – 11 March 1918) was a French physician.
Chief-physician in a French prison in Rouen, he is known to be the inventor of the shower in 1872.

Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette (French: [ʒɔʁʒ albɛʁ edwaʁ bʁytys ʒil də la tuʁɛt]; 30 October 1857 – 22 May 1904) was a French neurologist and the namesake of Tourette syndrome, a neurological condition characterized by tics. His main contributions in medicine were in the fields of hypnotism and hysteria.

Germain Sée (February 6, 1818 – May 12, 1896) was a French clinician who was a native of Ribeauvillé, Haut-Rhin.
He studied medicine in Paris, obtaining his doctorate in 1846 with a dissertation on ergotism ("Recherches sur les propriétés du seigle ergoté et de ses principes constituants"). In 1852 he became a physician of hospitals in Paris, and subsequently worked at La Rochefoucauld (from 1857), Beaujon (from 1861), Pitié (from 1862) and Charité (from 1868) hospitals. In 1866 he succeeded Armand Trousseau as chair of therapeutics at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and in 1876 attained the chair of clinical medicine at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris.
Sée specialized in the study of lung and cardiovascular diseases. He also made contributions in his research of chorea and its association with rheumatic disorders. He conducted extensive studies of various drugs, being an advocate of antipyrine as a general analgesic, and sodium salicylate for treatment of acute rheumatism. Sée also contributed to the diffusion of uses of hemp extract and tincture in soothing mild gastrointestinal disorders:Professor Germain Sée reported an elaborate work as to the value and uses of cannabis indica in the treatment of [gastric intestinal] neuroses and gastric dyspepsia. […] In conclusion, See maintains that cannabis is a true sedative to the stomach, and without any of the inconveniences of the narcotics.Among his writings were the multi-volume "Médecine clinique", a work that he co-authored with Frédéric Labadie-Lagrave, and "Leçons de pathologie expérimentale", a book on experimental pathology that was edited by Maurice Raynaud. His "Des maladies spécifiques, non tuberculeuses, du poumon" was later translated into English and published with the title "Diseases of the lungs (of a specific not tuberculous nature)" (1885).In 1869 he became a member of the Académie de Médecine.

Henri Jules Louis Marie Rendu (24 July 1844 – 16 April 1902) was a French physician born in Paris. He was related to glaciologist Louis Rendu (1789–1859).
He initially received an education in sciences at the school of agronomy in Rennes, and from 1865 studied medicine in Paris, becoming an interne in 1868 at the Hôpital Saint-Antoine. He served as a military surgeon during the Franco-Prussian War, and a few years later worked in the department of Pierre Potain (1825–1901) at the Hôpital Necker in Paris.
In 1877 he became médecin des hôpitaux, earning his agrégation the following year with a dissertation on chronic nephritis called Etude comparative des néphrites chroniques. In 1885 he was appointed head of the department of medicine at Hôpital Necker, a position he maintained for the rest of his career.
In 1897 Rendu was elected to the Académie Nationale de Médecine. He was a prolific writer, with many of his medical articles being published in the Bulletin de la Société anatomique de Paris, of which he was its editor in 1873–74. Throughout his career he held an avid interest in natural sciences, and spent considerable time as a botanical collector.

Augustin Marie Morvan (7 February 1819 in Lannilis – 20 March 1897 in Douarnenez) was a French physician, politician, and writer. He is best known for treating the first recorded case of the eponymous Morvan's syndrome, a rare neurological disorder marked by acute insomnia. Morvan served as a deputy to the French National Assembly that inaugurated the Third Republic in 1871. In Brest, France, where he began his medical studies, the Rue Augustin Morvan and the Hôpital Augustin Morvan are named after him.

Antoine Bernard-Jean Marfan (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃twan bɛʁnaʁ ʒɑ̃ maʁfɑ̃]; June 23, 1858 – February 11, 1942) was a French paediatrician.
He was born in Castelnaudary (département Aude, Languedoc-Roussillon) to Antoine Prosper Marfan and Adélaïde Thuries. He began his medical studies in Toulouse, where he stayed for two years before moving to Paris. He graduated in 1886, his education having been interrupted by a period of military service. In 1903 he became a professor of infantile hygiene in the paediatric clinic of the University of Paris. During the same year, he became a member of the Académie de Médecine.
In 1896, Marfan described a hereditary disorder of connective tissue that was to become known as Marfan syndrome, the term first being used by Henricus Jacobus Marie Weve (1888–1962) of Utrecht in 1931. Today, it is thought that Marfan's patient (a five-year-old girl named Gabrielle) was affected by a condition known as congenital contractural arachnodactyly, and not Marfan's syndrome.Further eponymous medical conditions named after Antoine Marfan include:

Dennie–Marfan syndrome
Marfan's hypermobility syndrome
Marfan's law
Marfan's sign
Marfan's symptom
Marfan–Madelung syndromeMarfan also had interests in the paediatric aspects of tuberculosis, nutrition and diphtheria. With Jacques-Joseph Grancher (1843–1907) and Jules Comby (1853–1947), he was co-author of Traité des maladies de l’enfance. From 1913 to 1922, he was publisher of the journal Le Nourrisson.

Jules Bernard Luys (17 August 1828 – 21 August 1897) was a French neurologist who made important contributions to the fields of neuroanatomy and neuropsychiatry.
Born in Paris on 17 August 1828 he became a doctor of medicine in 1857 and conducted extensive research on the anatomy, pathology and functions of the central nervous system. In 1865 he published a treatise entitled Studies on the Structure, Functions and Diseases of the Cerebro-spinal System, this book was accompanied by a hand-drawn three-dimensional atlas of the brain. It was within this book that Luys provided the first description of the structure that is today called the subthalamic nucleus. Luys termed this nucleus the bandelette accessoire des olives supérieures (accessory band of the superior olives) and concluded that it was a centre for the dispersion of cerebellar influence upon the striatum. Luys also traced the projection from the subthalamic nucleus to the globus pallidus and the projection to the subthalamic nucleus from the cerebral cortex. Today these pathways and structures are thought to be central to the pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease, the subthalamic nucleus being one of the major targets for deep brain stimulation.
In recognition of Luys discovery Auguste Forel (1848–1931) gave the subthalamic nucleus the name corpus Luysii (Luys' body), a name still sometimes used today.
In 1873, Luys published the first photographic atlas on the brain and nervous system: Iconographie Photographique des Centres Nerveux. The atlas contained seventy albumen prints of frontal, sagittal, and horizontal sections of the brain. Some of them were enlarged with a microscope, but the majority represented gross neuroanatomy. Despite the popularity of photography as a new visualization tool, the publication of the Iconographie did not lead to a proliferation of neuroanatomical photographic atlases in the subsequent decades. However, Edward Flatau published such an atlas in 1894.
In collaboration with his friend Benjamin Ball, he founded in 1881 the journal L'Encéphale.

Édouard Francis Kirmisson (July 18, 1848 – September 22, 1927) was a French surgeon who was a native of Nantes. He specialized in pediatric and orthopedic surgery.Kirmisson studied medicine at the École de Médecine in Paris, and later worked as an externe under Noël Guéneau de Mussy (1813–1885) at the Hôtel-Dieu. In 1879 he earned his medical doctorate, obtaining his agrégation in 1883. He spent the following years as a surgeon of Parisian hospitals, becoming a professor of pediatric surgery and orthopedics at Hôpital des Enfants-Malades in 1901.
In 1890 Kirmisson founded the journal "Revue d’orthopédie". In 1903 he became a member of the Académie de Médecine.

Pierre Charles Huguier (4 September 1804 – 12 January 1873) was a French surgeon and gynecologist born in Sézanne.In 1834 he received his medical doctorate at Paris, and was later a surgeon at the Hôpital Beaujon. In 1835 he became an associate professor of the faculty of medicine at Paris.Huguier is remembered for his pioneer work with genitourinary diseases such as lymphogranuloma venereum and uterine fibroma, with the latter disorder being formerly referred to as "Huguier's disease". He provided an early description of the anastomosis around the isthmus of the uterus, which is sometimes referred to as "Huguier's circle". His name is also lent to two anatomical structures associated with the ear:

"Huguier's canal", or the "anterior canaliculus of chorda tympani": A canal at the medial end of the petrotympanic fissure, through which the chorda tympani nerve exits the tympanic cavity. Also known as the "canal of Huguier", or "iter chordae anterius".
"Huguier's sinus": or the "fossula fenestrae vestibuli": A depression on the medial wall of the middle ear which has the vestibular window in its lower portion. Also called the little fossa of the vestibular window.He is also credited with development of a specialized hysterometer (uterine sound).