Jacques-René Tenon

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Jacques-René Tenon
Jacques-René Tenon
Born	February 21, 1724 Joigny
Died	January 16, 1816
Nationality	France
Fields	surgery
Doctoral advisor	Jacques-Bénigne Winslow

Jacques-René Tenon (February 21, 1724 - January 16, 1816) was a French surgeon who was born near the town of Joigny. He studied medicine in Paris, where one of his instructors was Jacques-Bénigne Winslow (1669-1760). For several years he was associated with the Salpêtrière, and in 1757 attained the chair of pathology of the College of Surgery. In 1759 he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences.

In 1788 Tenon published the Mémoire sur les hôpitaux de Paris (Memoirs on the Hospitals of Paris) which was a concise and detailed account of French hospitals. It was concerned with aspects such as hygiene, patient care and environmental conditions of hospitals. This publication was a catalyst regarding efforts to replace the Hôtel-Dieu of Paris by a committee from the Academy of Sciences, whose members included Tenon, and famous scientists such as Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743-1794), Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736-1806) and Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827).

In the 18th century, the Hôtel-Dieu was notoriously overcrowded, unsanitary and susceptible to fire. Architect Bernard Poyet (1742-1829) proposed a new Hôtel-Dieu on Île des Cygnes on the Seine River at a price of 12 million livres, while members of the Academy planned for four new hospitals far from the Seine (Saint-Louis in the north, Holy-Anne in the south, the Roquette in the east, and in the west the abbey of Holy-Périne of Chaillot). Although plans for building the four new hospitals to replace the Hôtel-Dieu initially looked promising, the project was met with resistance and eventually shelved in the early 1790s.

Today the Hôpital Tenon in Paris is named after him, as is the capsule of Tenon, an anatomical structure in the posterior part of the eye which he described in 1806.