PAPIN-RUILLIER-BEAUFOND Alexis Doctrine Staechologique du choléra d’après les travaux récents.

Moulinier Pierre. Naître hors de la métropole et se former à Paris : le cas des docteurs reçus à la Faculté de médecine de Paris au XIXe siècle. In: Outre-mers, tome 96, n°362-363, 1er semestre 2009. L’Atlantique Français. pp. 193-211.

First edition of his thesis in medicine, with a handwritten inscription on the cover : ‘To A. M. and Mrs Goullin, with the author’s respectful regards, A. Papin R. Beaufond’.

The recipients of this dedication were most likely Pierre-Bénoni Goullin (1799–1875), a merchant and prominent figure in Nantes, and his wife Joséphine Chaigneau. In 1828, Pierre-Bénoni Goullin took over the management of Rossel, a marine insurance firm whose business was notably linked to Nantes-based shipping companies engaged in trade with the colonies. His wife, a member of the Chaigneau family, also belonged to a circle closely connected to French colonial enterprises and networks. Pierre-Bénoni was, moreover, the brother of Dr Benoît-Pierre Goullin (1797–1864), a doctor trained in Paris who, in 1821, authored a thesis entitled Dissertation sur l’hypochondrie.

Alexis Papin-Ruillier-Beaufond was born in 1835 at Anse Bertrand in Guadeloupe. After obtaining his Bachelor of Science degree in Bordeaux, he completed the medical terms required for the submission of his thesis at the universities of Paris, Bordeaux, Montpellier and Strasbourg, and finally defended his thesis at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris on 28 July 1866.

In his study, the author sought to demonstrate the miasmatic origin of cholera, a theory which was still the subject of debate at the time. This view was the prevailing one in the 19^th century; it posited that the disease arose from the emanation of ‘bad air’ or toxic vapours containing decaying matter. However, the validity of this theory could not be confirmed. It was to this end that Papin-Ruillier-Beaufond devoted himself: “Cholera, as we hope to demonstrate in this thesis, is a general disease belonging to the class of virulent diseases of miasmatic origin, and the primary means of understanding the nature of such a disease is, in our view, to study the alterations it causes in these anatomical structures and in the humours of the human body.”

Whilst the work of F. Pacini and J. Snow in 1854 led, respectively, to the discovery of the bacterium responsible for the disease and to an explanation of its spread via contaminated water, it was not until Robert Koch’s work in 1883 that the bacterial origin of the disease was confirmed and its modes of transmission explained.

A good copy, with a few foxing spots.