Ernest Henri Besnier (21 April 1831 – 15 May 1909) was a French dermatologist and medicinal director of the Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris. He was a native of Honfleur, département Calvados.
He studied medicine in Paris, where in 1857 he received his medical doctorate. In 1863 he became médecin des hôpitaux, and in 1873 succeeded Pierre-Antoine-Ernest Bazin (1807-1878) as dermatologist at the Hôpital Saint Louis. He introduced histopathology and parasitology to the clinic, and originated the term biopsy for tissue samples. He was the first to describe the chronic skin changes of sarcoidosis, and gave it the name lupus pernio.
He founded the medical journal Annales de dermatologie et de syphiligraphie with Pierre Adolphe Adrien Doyon. He attempted to balance the differences between the French and Viennese approaches to dermatological medicine, and in 1881 with Doyon, translated Moritz Kaposi's famous book on skin diseases (Pathologie und Therapie der Hautkrankheiten in Vorlesungen für praktische Ärzte und Studirende) from German into French (Leçons sur les maladies de la peau).[1]
The eponymous Besnier's prurigo is named after a type of atopic dermatitis that he described.