Cruveilhier, Jean

2/9/1791–3/10/1874
FRENCH
ANATOMIST

Jean Cruveilhier was the first professor of pathology at the University of Paris. He introduced the descriptive method to the field of pathology, and this method was defined by the lithographs in his massive two-volume atlas, Anatomie pathologique du corps humain (Pathological Anatomy of the Human Body).

Cruveilhier was born on February 9, 1791, in Limoges, France, as Léon Jean Baptiste Cruveilhier, the son of a career military surgeon. He was raised almost exclusively by his mother, as his father was usually away with the army during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Cruveilhier felt a calling to the Roman Catholic priesthood, but his father refused to allow it, insisting that he study medicine instead. He completed his secondary education at the College of Limoges in 1810, then moved to Paris, where his father had arranged for him to become the student of Guillaume Dupuytren, the most prominent French surgeon of the era.

Dupuytren struggled to turn his friend's son away from religion toward medicine and finally succeeded in awakening his interest in pathology. After taking his M.D. degree in 1816, Cruveilhier sought only the simple life of an ordinary physician in his native town, but, goaded by his father's ambitious plans for him and failing, perhaps because of his father's machinations, to gain a staff position as hospital surgeon in Limoges, he returned to Paris in 1823. Dupuytren secured him a professorship in surgery at the University of Montpellier. Cruveilhier soon resigned, intending to go back to Limoges, but in 1825 he became professor of descriptive anatomy in Paris, where he spent the rest of his career.

By 1826, Cruveilhier was on the staff of most hospitals in Paris and had established a small but prestigious and successful medical practice. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was among his patients. Cruveilhier took advantage of the death of René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laënnec in 1826 to revive the Anatomical Society of Paris, which Dupuytren had founded in 1803 but which Laënnec, as president, had allowed to become dormant after 1808. Serving as its president until 1866, Cruveilhier broadened and solidified its publishing program.

Dupuytren died in Paris on February 8, 1835. His will stipulated that a chair of pathological anatomy at the University of Paris and a museum of pathological anatomy should both be established with funds from his estate and that Cruveilhier should occupy this chair. These bequests were honored. The toxicologist Mathieu Orfila founded the Musée Dupuytren in 1835; Cruveilhier assumed the professorship in 1836 and held it for the rest of his life. He published a short biography of Dupuytren in 1841.

The National Academy of Medicine elected Cruveilhier a member in 1836 and its president in 1839. Always concerned with medical ethics, he gave an important speech on November 2, 1836, at the public meeting of the Paris medical faculty, "On the Duties and the Morality of the Physician," which was published the following year.

Cruveilhier's first major publication was his doctoral thesis, Essai sur l'anatomie pathologique en général (Essay on Pathological Anatomy in General), which appeared in 1816. He continued on this subject in his 1821 book, Médecine pratiqueé éclairée par l'anatomie et la physiologie pathologiques (Practical Medicine Clarified by Pathological Anatomy and Physiology). In 1830 his textbook, Cours d'études anatomiques (Course of Anatomical Studies) appeared. His Traité d'anatomie descriptive (Treatise of Descriptive Anatomy) was published in four volumes from 1833 to 1836 and his Traité d'anatomie pathologique générale (Treatise of General Pathological Anatomy) was published in five volumes from 1849 to 1864.

The subtitle of Cruveilhier's greatest work, the Pathological Anatomy, which he issued gradually in forty parts from 1829 to 1842, indicates that it contains "descriptions of the various morbid changes to which the human body is susceptible." Its text was quickly translated into English, German, Italian, Arabic, and Spanish and its plates were cheaply and sometimes poorly reproduced by either redrawing or transfer lithography. Cruveilhier's dissection of 54-year-old Louise Bonin, who died of uterine cancer in 1838, resulted in a section of the Pathological Anatomy that was long believed to be the first description of multiple sclerosis, but recent scholarship has established that Scottish pathologist Robert Carswell studied this disease before Cruveilhier.

Cruveilhier's contributions to forensic science predominantly involved developing precise methods of autopsy for determining the specific cause of death. His research into phlebitis, embolism, infarction, and other vascular disorders formed the basis of Rudolf Virchow's more significant work on these topics.

Cruveilhier lacked knowledge of chemistry, biology, histology, and several other disciplines that a medical scientist would normally be expected to have mastered. Yet, his observations of gross anatomy and lesions were so meticulous and his descriptions so clear and accurate that even the discerning neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing, a hundred years later, could not find fault with them. Cruveilhier died on March 18, 1876, at his country home near Limoges in Sussac, Haute-Vienne.