Fournier, Germain Celestine Edward

From the age of fourteen, Eduard Fournier studied medicine under the guidance of his father. At the age of 20, on January 23, 1853 , young Edward entered the Imperial Navy of Napoleon as an assistant surgeon . First he was sent to Marengo, and then, in 1854 , he was sent from Marengo to the Crimea , where he had to take care of the soldiers and sailors who were ill with cholera . During an outbreak of cholera among Napoleonic soldiers, Edward himself fell ill with cholera and almost died from this formidable disease ^[1] .

Eduard Fournier participated in the siege of Sevastopol , serving as chief surgeon with the rank of medical major on the large ship Le Caton. After that, in 1855 , he was assigned to a therapeutic hospital in Constantinople , where his duty was to provide medical care to patients with typhus and typhoid fever . In the process of providing assistance, Eduard Fournier himself fell ill with typhus and again found himself on the brink of death . He returned to France and left the army , deciding to engage in scientific activities. Having entered the doctorate at the University of Montpellier , on March 4, 1857 , exactly on the day of his 24th birthday, Eduard Fournier successfully defended his thesis for the degree of doctor of medicine, becoming one of the youngest doctors of science in France at that time. His doctoral dissertation was devoted to the study of typhoid fever, the clinic of which he observed many times when he was his general practitioner at the Marine Hospital in Constantinople ^[1] .

After receiving the title of Doctor of Medicine, Eduard Fournier worked as a district doctor in the 2nd district of Paris . He actively participated in the activities of various charitable societies and brotherhoods and often provided medical services free of charge, believing that medical care should be as accessible as possible to the poor and low-income groups of the population. In 1858, he joined the Young Society ( French Société des jeunes ), which promoted leftist views , freedom , equality , fraternity and social justice . During his work as a district doctor in Paris, Eduard Fournier became interested in pathogenetic factors affecting the prevalence of tuberculosis , which at that time was actively mowing young people , especially from the Paris urban poor . He found that this disease is transmitted by airborne droplets when a patient or carrier coughs , and more often occurs in people exposed to harmful gases or industrial dust ( coal , metal , asbestos , etc.). After establishing this fact, Eduard Fournier became interested in the details of the anatomical structure of the respiratory tract , facilitating or obstructing the penetration of harmful substances into the lungs by aerosols. This, in turn, led him to study the technique of laryngoscopy and structural details of the larynx , epiglottis ( tongue ), soft palate , Eustachian tube and vocal cords . As a result, he became a major specialist in the physiology and disorders of voice and speech in humans, that is, one of the first phoniatrists ^[1] .

His achievements in the study of the physiology of voice and speech did not go unnoticed, and on March 16, 1867, he was appointed a doctor at the National Institute of the Deaf and Dumb , where he continued to pursue his scientific career , switching from the physiology of voice and speech to the study of sign language education (methods for teaching the deaf using sign language , as well as methods for developing their speech based on existing residual hearing ). As a result, already in the same 1867, he became the medical director of the Institute of the Deaf and Dumb. Then the Franco-Prussian war and the siege of Paris began , and in 1870 - 1871 he was again drafted into the army, where he served as the chief surgeon of the regiment with the rank of colonel of medical service. In 1879, Eduard Fournier became the chief editor of French and international medical journals ^[1] .

Eduard Fournier died on March 24, 1886 in Paris on the street of Louis-le-Grand. His wife, Marie Julie Lenoir, survived him, remaining a widow ^[1] .

The works of Eduard Fournier touch on an unusually wide range of questions from different areas of medical knowledge: questions of the structure and functioning of the central nervous system , localization of certain functions in the brain , questions of the philosophy of medicine and medical ethics . His work on the physiology of voice and speech and on human psychology was widely recognized and was appreciated in international scientific and medical circles after the death of Fournier ^[1] .

In 1873, Eduard Fournier conducted an experiment with the introduction of a sclerosing solution of zinc chloride into halves of cats' thalamus and was able to prove that this results in a decrease or loss of sensitivity on the side opposite to the side of the introduction of the sclerosing solution. This work of Fournier was important for establishing the role of the thalamus in the integration and processing of information from different senses , that is, its role as a central relay station for all sensory information, except for olfaction, on its way into the cerebral cortex ^[2] .

• fr. Des rapports des médecins et des pharmaciens avec les sociétés de secours mutuels ( 1861 ).
• De la pénétration des corps pulvérulents, gazeux, solides et liquides dans les voies respiratoires au point de vue de l'hygiène et de la thérapeutique ( 1862 ).
• Étude pratique sur le laryngoscope et sur l'application des remèdes topiques dans les voies respiratoires ( 1863 ).
• Mémoire lu à l'Académie des Sciences, dans la séance du 11 avril, Physiologie de la voix ( 1864 ).
• Physiologie de la voix et de la parole ( 1866 ).
• Consultation médicale sur le choléra ( 1866 ).
• Physiologie et instruction du sourd-muet d'après la physiologie des divers langages ( 1868 ).
• Physiologie du système nerveux cérébro-spinal ( 1872 ).
• Recherches expérimentales sur le fonctionnement du cerveau ( 1873 ).
• Note lue à l'Académie de Médecine, le 4 août 1874, Physiologie et Instruction des sourds-muets ( 1874 ).
• Essai de psychologie: la bête et l'homme ( 1877 ).
• Physiologie des sons de la voix et de la parole ( 1877 ).
• Application des sciences à la médecine ( 1878 ).
• Du rôle de la trompe d'Eustache dans la physiologie de l'audition ( 1880 ).
• Contribution à l'étude de l'emploi des métaux, de l'électricité et du magnétisme en médecine ( 1881 ).
• La trompe d'Eustache. Physiologie de la voix et la parole. Localisations cérébrales. Physiologie pathologique des hallucinations ( 1881 ).
• Ch. Darwin, étude critique ( 1882 ).
• Claude Bernard et la méthode expérimentale ( 1882 ).
• In collaboration with his father in 1859 he published a book on the medical use of mineral waters Alet-les-Bains ( De l'emploi thérapeutique de l'eau d'Alet ).