Pierre Louis Alphée Cazenave

Pierre Louis Alphée Cazenave became Interne des Hôpitaux de Paris in 1823 and was conferred doctor of medicine in 1827. At the Hôpital Saint-Louis he was a pupil of Laurent Theodore Biett (1781-1840), who introduced the doctrines of Robert Willan (1757)-1812) and Thomas Bateman (1778-1821) in France, and with Henry Edward Schedel (died 1856) he published Biett’s lectures in 1828.

In 1835 he became professor agrégé at the faculty, and soon after he was entrusted with the teaching of materia medica. In 1839 he participated without success in a concours for this chair.

Cazenave concentrated his efforts in the study of diseases of skin, and he is credited with having abandoned previous superficial and schematic methods and introduced scientific methodology. At the Hôpital Saint-Louis generations of students were his pupils.

From 1844 to 1852 he edited the first journal devoted entirely to scientific dermatology, Les annales des maladies de la peau et de la syphilis, and from 1828 was co publisher of the Journal hebdomadaire de médecine. He coined the term lupus erymatodes.

• Sur quelques propositions de médecine (maladies de la peau).
  Doctoral thesis, 1827.
• Abrégé pratique des maladies de la peau peau d'après les auteurs les plus estimés, et surtout d'après les documents uisés dans les Leçons cliniques de M. Biett.
  With Henry Edward Schedel. Paris, Bechet jeune, 1828.
  This book codified and published the lectures, doctrines and observations of Laurent Theodore Biett (1781-1840), the leading clinical teacher in dermatology of the early 19th century, who published very little himself.
  The Abrégé improves upon Bateman, especially in the section on the cutaneous manifestations of syphilis. "Continually revised and translated into all the important laguages of the Western World, the Abrégé became the most influential text of the time and remained so for 30 years" (Crissey & Parish).
  3rd edition, Paris, Bechet jeune, 1838.
  Biett's classic description of lupus erythematoides migrans is on page 11 and 415.
  4th edition, 1847.
  English translation by R. E. Griffith, Philadelphia, 1829; by Thomas H. Burgess, with annotations by H. D. Buckley, New York, 1846; 2nd American edition, 1862. Other English editions 1832 and 1842.
  German translation in Klinische Handbibliothek, 1829, volume II; several editions, 1839;
• Quels sont les caractères des névroses. Thesis for agrégé, 1835.
• De l’appreciation des divers moyens qui peuvent être emplyés pour connaître les propriétés des médicaments.
  Concours thesis for the chair of materia medica.
• Lecons sur les maladies de la peau profesés à l’École de médecine de Paris en 1841-44. Paris, 1845.
• Traité des syphilides ou maladies vénériennes de la peau, précédé de considérations sur la syphilis etc.
  Paris, 1843; German translation by W. Walther and C. Struebel, Leipzig, 1844.
• Traité des maladies de cuir chevelu, etc. Paris, 1850.
• Agenda médical. Paris, 1851-1862.
• Leçons sur les maladies de la peau. Paris, Labé, 1856.
  Cazenave was among the first to classify skin diseases on an anatomical basis. This large folio atlas is the most visually impressive of all his books. From publication in fascicules, 1845-1856.
• Leçons cliniques sur les maladies de la peau . . . . Recueillies etc. par Gust. Bernard. 1858.
• De la décoration humaine, hygiène de la beaté. 1867.
• Pathologie générale des maladies de la peau. 1868.
• Compendium des maladies de la peau et de la syphilis. 1869.