Dr. Desire Bourneville

Abstract

DR. DÉSERÉ MAGLOIBE BOUBNEVTLLE, a pioneer in the welfare of defective children, was born at Garencières in Normandy on October 21, 1840. He studied medicine in Paris, where he qualified in 1870. Three years later he founded Le Progrès Médical, which soon became one of the leading French medical journals. In 1879 he was appointed senior physician to the Bicêtre infirmary, where he took charge of a service almost entirely devoted to idiocy and other forms of mental defect in children and published the Comptes rertdus de Bicetre. In the following year He founded the Archives de Neurologie under the patronage of Charcot, whose works he had edited some years previously. Bourneville was one of the first in France to confirm Hertoghe's observations on thyroid cachexia and to prove the value of thyroid medication. He was also the first to describe the association of sclerotic nodules in the brain with mental defect and epilepsy which is known as tuberous sclerosis. He took an active part in the laicization of hospitals and in the foundation of training schools for nurses at La Salpêtrière, Lariboisière and Pitié hospitals. In 1905 he retired from the Bicêtre infirmary and was appointed director of the Vallee Foundation for the treatment of idiots and mentally defective children. He died on May 28, 1909.