[Forgotten great men of medicine--Baron Dominique Jean Larrey (1766-1842)].

BIOGRAPHY

Baron Dominique Jean Larrev was a French army surgeon who rose to become a surgeon-in-chief of Napoleon's Grande Armée. Many advances in the field of surgery have been attributed to him: he was one of the first to amputate at the hip-joint (1812); he pioneered the use of maggots to prevent infection in wounds; he gave the first description of a trench foot, and originated the first aid to combatants by getting stretcher-bearers to take wounded men immediately from the battlefield. EDUCATION AND CAREER: Larrey studied medicine in Paris and spent a short time in the navy before resuming his studies at the Parisian College de Chirurgie. He joined the army in 1792 and spent the rest of his active life there, taking part in 60 battles and 400 other engagements, having been wounded three times. During this time, he initiated the modern method of army surgery, field hospitals and the system of army ambulance corps. After seeing the speed with which the carriages of the French flying artillery manoeuvred across the battlefields. Larrey adapted them as Flying Ambulances for rapid transport of the wounded and staffed them with trained crews of drivers, corpsmen and litter-bearers. Larrey also increased the mobility and improved the organization of field hospitals, effectively creating a forerunner of the modern MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) units. He was made a baron in 1809. He remained loyal to Napoleon even after his abdication in 1814, and followed him on his final campaign (the hundred days). At Waterloo, he was captured and sentenced to death; however, he was saved by the personal intervention of the Prussian commander Blücher. Many historians put him in the line with chemist Antoine Lavoisier and doctors Joseph Guillotin and Jean Paul Marat.