Gabriel Andral

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Gabriel Andral (1797-1876) was a distinguished French pathologist and a professor at Paris University. In 1828, he was appointed professor of hygiene, and in 1839 he succeeded François-Joseph-Victor Broussais (1772-1838) as chairman of general pathology and therapy, a position he held for 27 years.

Andral was an important pioneer concerning the scientific study of blood chemistry. He is considered as the founder of the science of hematology, and its integration into clinical and analytical medicine. In 1840, he and his colleague, Louis Denis Jules Gavarret (1809–1890) published their studies regarding blood composition. Their work displayed the importance of animal chemistry as a way of confirming diagnoses. They showed that blood composition varies in different pathological conditions.

Andral's crowning achievement is the Clinique médicale, a five-volume work that comprises almost every facet of medicine known at the time. It is an exhaustive summary of French medicine and its development in the early part of the 19th century.

Also, he is credited as the first physician to describe lymphangitis carcinomatosa in a patient with uterine cancer, this disease is usually associated with cancers of the lung, breast, stomach, and cervix. His father, Guillaume Andral, was also a physician of note.[1]

[edit] Works

Projet d'un essai sur la vitalité (1835)
An edition of Lænnec's Traité de l'auscultation médiate ou traité du diagnostic des poumons et du cœur (1836)
Cours de pathologie interne (1836-37)
Sur le traitement de la fièvre typhoïde par les purgatifs (1837)
Traité élémentaire de pathologie et de thérapeutique générale (1843)

[edit] Terms

Andral's decubitus — decubitus on the sound side; a position assumed in the early stages of pleurisy.

(Dorland's Medical Dictionary — 1938)

[edit] References

Doyle L. (August 1989). "Gabriel Andral (1797-1876) and the first reports of lymphangitis carcinomatosa.". J R Soc Med. 82 (8): 491-3. PMID 2674433. Full text