Ernest Besnier

BESNIER, Ernest (1831–1909), a prominent French clinician, dermatologist, and hygienist. For over 30 years, he was the head of the Paris School of Dermatology. In 1857, he defended his dissertation on the topic "On the Recognition and Treatment of Strangulated Abdominal Organs," which was awarded a prize by the Medical Academy. From 1864 to 1872, he served successively as the head of three major Parisian therapeutic hospitals. In 1873, he succeeded Bazin at the Saint-Louis Hospital. Besnier was the first in France to establish histological and bacteriological laboratories in his dermatology department; he popularized the biopsy method, coining the very term "biopsy." He was the first chairman of the Dermatological Society in Paris; he served as a member of the editorial committee of Annales de Dermatologie et de Syphiligraphie; he was twice (1889 and 1900) elected chairman of international dermatological congresses; and for his remarkable work on hygiene, "On the Laws Governing Epidemics," he was elected a member of the Medical Academy in 1881.

He introduced chrysarobin, pyrogallol, galvanocautery, and scarification into dermatology. Besnier was the initiator of the creation of the French dermatological encyclopedia (La Pratique dermatologique), in which he included a classic work on eczema. He identified and developed, as a specific type of dermatosis, pityriasis rubra pilaris (1889), clinically established the tuberculous nature of lupus vulgaris (1879–1882), and was the first of the dermatologists to test tuberculin treatment for lupus (1891). He identified as specific types: prurigo diathesica (1892–1896), ulcerative glanders of the face (1891), and arthropathic psoriasis (1886). At the leprosy congresses of 1887 and 1897, he presented classic reports on the contagiousness of leprosy, refuting the doctrine of the anticontagionists, etc. One of his most significant works is a translation, with notes, of Kaposi's dermatological textbook, which contains a masterful critique of the views of the Vienna school and a masterful comparison of the views of the Vienna and Paris schools. Besnier was an honorary member of all European dermatological societies.