French physiologists

André Strohl (20 March 1887 – 10 March 1977) was a French physiologist who was a native of Poitiers. He is remembered for his role in the diagnosis of Guillain–Barré syndrome (sometimes called Guillain–Barré–Strohl syndrome), a form of areflexic paralysis which exhibits normal cell count but with an abnormal increase in spinal fluid protein. The syndrome is named after two French neurologists; Georges Guillain and Jean Alexandre Barré.
In 1916, during World War I, Strohl was serving in the Neurological Centre of the French Sixth Army with Guillain and Barré. The three doctors noticed that two soldiers, who were suffering from muscular weakening and pain along with paresthesias, had an unexpected amount of spinal fluid protein production. Strohl is credited with performing the electrophysiological tests on the soldiers. Eventually, the two patients were able to recover from their illness. In 1916, Guillain, Barré and Strohl reported their findings in a medical journal. In 1927, H. Draganesco and J. Claudion coined the term "Guillain–Barré syndrome", apparently overlooking Strohl's contributions.In 1924 Strohl became a professor of physiological medicine in Algiers, and two years later acquired the same position at the University of Paris. He retired from there in 1957. He was also a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine.

Georges Henri Roger (4 June 1860 – 19 April 1946) was a French physiologist born in Paris. He studied medicine in Paris, where he later became a professor of experimental pathology and physiology. In 1930 he was appointed dean of the medical faculty.
In the field of experimental pathology, he performed research of cholelithiasis and hepatic disease. Among his written works were articles on diseases of the liver, gastro-intestinal tract and spinal cord. In addition his 1897-98 lectures at the University of Paris were translated into English, and published as "Introduction to the Study of Medicine" (1901)
With Georges-Fernand Widal (1862-1929) and Pierre Teissier (1864-1932), he was co-author of the 22-volume Nouveau traité de médecine (New Treatise of Medicine), which was a comprehensive French masterpiece of anatomy and pathology. His name is lent to the eponymous "Roger's reflex"; a term that is sometimes used to describe excessive salivation due to irritation of the lower part of the esophagus.

Félix-Archimède Pouchet (26 August 1800 – 6 December 1872) was a French naturalist and a leading proponent of spontaneous generation of life from non-living materials, and as such an opponent of Louis Pasteur's germ theory. He was the father of Georges Pouchet (1833–1894), a professor of comparative anatomy.
From 1828 he was director of the Rouen Jardin des Plantes. Later, in 1838, he became professor at the School of Medicine at the University of Rouen. His major scientific work Hétérogénie was published in 1859. He also wrote a layperson's encyclopedia The Universe, published in 1870, which gives an overview of the sciences, but in which Pouchet ridicules Louis Pasteur's theories (calling them panspermism) and atomic theory.
In 1847, Pouchet effectively launched the study of the physiology of cytology. In 1848, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.

Michel Victor Pachon (May 26, 1867 – 1938) was a French physiologist born in Clermont-Ferrand.
In 1892 he earned his doctorate at the University of Paris, and later became a chief assistant in Paris to physiologists Charles Richet (1850-1935) and Eugène Gley (1857–1930). In 1911 he became a professor of physiology at the medical faculty of the University of Bordeaux. Today, this institution is named "Faculte de médecine Victor Pachon" in his honor.

Pachon is remembered for his work involving blood pressure and oscillometry; which is defined as the measurement of oscillations used in cardiovascular and respiratory physiology. In 1909 Pachon developed a sphygmographic oscillometer for measuring arterial blood pressure. Pachon's oscillometer was widely used by doctors and technicians during the first half of the twentieth century.

Jean-Pierre Morat (18 April 1846 – 25 July 1920) was a French physiologist born in Saint-Sorlin, department Saône-et-Loire.
He studied medicine at École de médecine de Lyon, traveling to Paris in 1873, where he presented his dissertation-thesis on bone marrow, "Contributions à l’étude de la moelle osseuse". He remained in Paris for three years, working in the laboratory of Claude Bernard (1813–1878), of whom, Morat became a devoted disciple. In Paris, he worked closely with veterinarian Henri Toussaint (1847–1890) and physiologist Albert Dastre (1844–1917). With Toussaint, he collaborated on "Les variations de l’état électrique des muscles" (Variations of the electrical state of muscles), and with Dastre, he undertook extensive research of the sympathetic nervous system. With Dastre, the "Dastre-Morat Law" is derived, a dictum which states that "the vasoconstriction of the capillaries of the body surface is usually accompanied by vasodilation of the internal vessels, especially of the viscera, and vice-versa".
Following his years spent in Paris, he became an instructor of physiology at the faculty of medicine in Lille. In 1882 he was appointed professor of physiology at the faculty of medicine in Lyon, a position he maintained until his retirement in 1916. In 1883 he was admitted to the Société de biologie, and in 1904 was elected as a correspondent to the Académie de Médecine. In 1916 he became a correspondent of the Académie des sciences.
Morat had a keen interest in the field of surgery, being credited for introducing a process of administering morphine and atropine to a patient prior to the administration of anesthesia. Among his better known writings was the six volume "Traité de physiologie" (1904), a work that was co-written with a former student of his, Maurice Doyon (1869–1934).

François Achille Longet (25 May 1811 – 20 April 1871) was a French anatomist and physiologist who was a native of Saint Germain-en-Laye, Yvelines.
He was a student of François Magendie (1783–1855), and a pioneer in the field of experimental physiology. In 1853 he attained the chair of physiology of the Faculté de Médecine in Paris. One of his better known students was German physiologist Moritz Schiff (1823–1896).
Longet is remembered for extensive research of the autonomic nervous system, and physiological experiments of the anterior and posterior columns of the spinal cord in regards to sensory and motor functionality. Also, he is credited with providing a detailed comprehensive description of nerve innervation of the larynx. With Jean Pierre Flourens (1794–1867), he performed pioneer experiments on the effects of ether and chloroform on the central nervous system in laboratory animals.

Henri Marie René Leriche (12 October 1879 – 28 December 1955) was a French vascular surgeon and physiologist.
He was a specialist in pain, vascular surgery and the sympathetic trunk. He sensitized many who were mutilated in the first World war, he was the first to be interested in pain and to practice gentle surgery with as little trauma as possible.
Two symptoms have the name Algoneurodystrophy and the aortic iliac obliteration. He has trained many students, such as Michael E. DeBakey, Jão Cid dos Santos, René Fontaine et Jean Kunlino.

Jacques Raphaël Lépine (6 July 1840 – 17 November 1919) was a French physiologist who was a native of Lyon.

Nestor Louis François Gréhant (2 April 1838 in Laon – 26 March 1910) was a French physiologist.
In 1864 he received his medical doctorate in Paris, where he later earned a doctorate in natural sciences (1870). He served as a préparateur to Claude Bernard at the faculty of sciences in Paris, and subsequently became director of the laboratory of general physiology at the École pratique des Hautes Études. In Paris, he also served as a professor of physiology at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle. In 1905 he became a member of the Académie de médecine.He is best remembered for his studies of blood and blood circulation (measurement of cardiac output in animals) and respiration. He also made contributions in his research of the nervous system, of muscle activity, toxicology, anaesthesia and experimental hygiene. He developed a number of devices that he used in research, including a grisoumètre (firedamp detector) that was still in use in coal mines up until 1950.

Marcel Eugène Émile Gley (French: [glɛ]; 18 January 1857 – 24 October 1930) was a French physiologist and endocrinologist born in Épinal, Vosges.
He studied physiology with Henri-Étienne Beaunis at the medical school in Nancy, and afterwards worked as an assistant to Étienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904) in Paris. Later on, he received the title of professeur agrégé, and in 1908 became a professor at the Collège de France. He was a member of the Académie de Médecine and secretary general of the Société de Biologie. He was a colleague to Charles Richet (1850–1935), and with Richet, published the Journal de physiologie et de pathologie générale. With Belgian pharmacologist Jean-François Heymans, he founded the journal Archives Internationales de Pharmacodynamie et de Thérapie (1895).In 1891 Gley was the first to discover the importance of the parathyroid glands, which are four (or more) small endocrine glands lying close or embedded in the posterior surface of the thyroid gland. These glands had been recently discovered as an anatomical entity in 1880, however their importance was not understood at the time. Gley realized that the cause of tetany after thyroid operations was the inadvertent destruction of the parathyroid glands. He demonstrated this by removing the parathyroid glands from laboratory animals and witnessing their deaths from tetany. Because of his discovery, parathyroid glands have sometimes been referred to as "Gley's glands".
In his studies of the thyroid, he discovered that there was much more iodine in thyroid tissue than in the parathyroid, and noticed that when the thyroid is removed, a disturbance of iodine metabolism occurs.