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Adolphe Marie Gubler

Born  1821
Died  1879

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French physician and pharmacologist, born April 5, 1821, Metz; died April 20, 1879; Paris.

Biography of Adolphe Marie Gubler

As an adolescent,Adolphe-Marie Gubler concerned himself with botany during a stay at his uncle a military pharmacologist in Rocroy, near Paris. He studied medicine in Paris from 1841, and, at the initiative of Armand Trousseau (1801-1867), he became travelling companion to a young man who had become melancolic because of a duelling affair. In a bout of mania the young man had almost shot him in Milano. Because of his wounds, from which he was never completely to recover, Gubler had to spend almost a year in Milano.

Gubler became interne des hôpitaux in 1845 and obtained his doctorate in Paris in 1849. He then became pysician at the Hôpital Beaujon, in 1850 chef de clinique at the medical faculty and médecin de Bureau central des hôpitaux. In 1852 he received the prize of the Académie des sciences and became vice president of the Société de biologie, of which he had been a member since its founding in 1848/1849.

In 1849 Gubler wrote one of the first descriptions of syphilitic gumma of the liver and described the liver lesions in congenital syphilis. In 1853 he obtained his agrégé after defending his classic Thèse d'agrégation on the «Theories of the production of cirrhosis in the liver» and in 1856 published his first work on hemiplegia. The following year he drew attention to flushing of the cheekss in relation to pneumonia and popularised this sign which had been described earlier. He was one of the first to emphasise the importance of examining the patient’s urine, both chemically and microscopically, and drew attention to the significance of the presence of hyaline and granular casts. Gubler was the first to distinguish between haemotogenous and hepatogenous icterus.

In 1865 Gubler became a member of th Académie de médecine, and in 1868 was appointed professor of therapy at the medical faculty in Paris, remaining in that position until his death in 1879.

A cheerful individual, he was above all a clinical investigator who endeavoured to apply the most recent scientific advances to the treatment of his patients.

We thank Søren Nørby for correcting an error in our original entry.

Bibliography

Gubler's publications fall into three groups. The first group comprises works on plant pathology first given at the Société de biologie. Among them are (Paris, 1848 and 1849:
  • Mémoires sur les galles.
  • Sur les tumeurs des pommiers.
  • Sur l'existence d'un nouveau champignon dans les olives malades.
  • Sur la maladie du blé.
  • Le nanisme végétal. Anatomical and physiological works:
  • Des glandes de Méry (vulgairement de Cooper) et de leurs maladies chez l'homme.
    Doctoral thesis; Paris, 1849.
  • Sur l'existence des glandules mucipares dans la vésicule du fiel.
  • Sur la contractilité des veines.
  • Sur la présence du sucre dans la lymphe etc. Works on clinical medicine:
  • Mémoire sur une nouvelle affection du foie liée à la syphilis héréditaire chez les enfants du premier âge. Paris, 1852.
  • Mémoire sur l'ictère qui accompagne quelquefois les éruptions syphilitiques précoes. Paris, 1854.
  • De l'hémiplégie alterne envisagée comme signe de lésion de la protubérance annulaire et comme preuve de la décussation des nerfs faciaux.
    Gazette hebdomadaire de médecine et de chirurgie, Paris, 1856, 3: 749-754, 789-792, 811-816.
    English translation in Wolf, The classical brain stem syndromes. Springfield, Thomas, 1971.
  • Mémoire sur l'angine maligne gangréneuse. Paris, 1857.
  • Études sur l'origine etc. de la mucédinée du muquet (oidium albicans). Paris, 1858. Gubler's pharmacological works, upon which his real importance rests. Most of his smaller works, on aconitin, bromkali, calabar, chloral, curare, chinchona, etc. were published in Journal de thérapeutique, of which he was the publishe. The larger works are:
  • Commentaires thérapeutiques du codex medicamentarius ou histoire de l'action physiologique et des effets thérapeutiques des médicaments inscrits dans la pharmacopée française.
    Paris, 1868; 2nd edition, 1873-1874. Awarded the Chaussieer-prize of the Académie des sciences.
  • Leçons de thérapeutique faites à la Faculté de médecine de Paris. Recuilles et publiées par Dr. F. Leblanc. Paris, 1879.
  • Cours de thérapeutique professé à la Faculté de médecine.
    Paris, 1880. Published posthumously by Dr. Bordier.
  • Union médicale, Paris, T. XXCIII, pp. 13-20.
  • Gazette médicale de Paris, 1879, pp. 317, 341.
  • Index-Catalogue, V, page 640.

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