20th-century French physicians

Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961), better known by the pen name Louis-Ferdinand Céline ( say-LEEN, French: [lwi fɛʁdinɑ̃ selin] ), was a French novelist, polemicist, and physician. His first novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932) won the Prix Renaudot but divided critics due to the author's pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his writing style based on working-class speech. In subsequent novels such as Death on the Installment Plan (1936), Guignol's Band (1944) and Castle to Castle (1957) Céline further developed an innovative and distinctive literary style. Maurice Nadeau wrote: "What Joyce did for the English language...what the surrealists attempted to do for the French language, Céline achieved effortlessly and on a vast scale."From 1937 Céline wrote a series of antisemitic polemical works in which he advocated a military alliance with Nazi Germany. He continued to publicly espouse antisemitic views during the German occupation of France, and after the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944, he fled to Germany and then Denmark where he lived in exile. He was convicted of collaboration by a French court in 1951 but was pardoned by a military tribunal soon after. He returned to France where he resumed his careers as a doctor and author. Céline is widely considered to be one of the greatest French novelists of the 20th century but remains a controversial figure in France due to his antisemitism and activities during the Second World War.

Didier Raoult (French pronunciation: [didje ʁa.ul(t)]; born 13 March 1952) is a retired French physician and microbiologist specialising in infectious diseases. He taught about infectious diseases at the Faculty of Medicine of Aix-Marseille University (AMU), and in 1984, created the Rickettsia Unit of the university. From 2008 to 2022, Raoult was the director of the Unité de Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales Emergentes. He gained significant worldwide attention during the COVID-19 pandemic for vocally promoting hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the disease, despite the lack of evidence for its effectiveness and the subsequent opposition from NIH and WHO to its use for the treatment of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients.As of 2024, nine of Raoult's research publications have been retracted, and another 55 of his publications have received an expression of concern from their publishers, due to questions related to ethics approval for his studies.

Lucien-Marie Pautrier (2 August 1876, in Aubagne – 9 July 1959, in Strasbourg) was a French dermatologist.

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.

André Latarjet (1877–1947) was a French physician. In 1933, at the 2nd International AIMS (FIMS) Congress, he was elected President of the organization which would become the International Federation of Sports Medicine, the World agency for sports medicine.

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.

Adrien Alphonse Alcide Borel (19 March 1886, in Paris – 19 September 1966, in Beaumont-lès-Valence) was a French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

Augustin Nicolas Gilbert (15 February 1858 – 4 March 1927) was a French physician. He was born in the town of Buzancy, Ardennes, and died in Paris.

He received his doctorate from the University of Paris and became an interne at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. Later he was a professor of therapeutics (1902) and clinical medicine (1905) at Hôtel-Dieu. In 1907 he became a member of the Académie de Médecine.
He published many articles and books on a wide array of medical subjects. With Jean Alfred Fournier (1832-1914) he published Bibliothèque rouge de l'étudiant en médecine, and with Paul Brouardel (1837-1906) and others, he published the multi-volume Traité de médecine et de Thérapeutique. With neurologist Maurice Villaret (1877–1946), he conducted extensive research of portal hypertension.Gilbert described a hereditary cause of increased bilirubin; today this disorder is known as Gilbert's syndrome and is believed to be caused by a deficiency of the enzyme glucuronosyltransferase.

Noël Armand Fiessinger (24 December 1881 – 15 January 1946) was a French physician.

Robert Degos (1904–1987) was a French dermatologist who described several dermatoses including Degos disease which he first described in a seminal paper published in 1942 in the French journal of dermatology and syphilology.