Edmond Nocard
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
veterinarian
Veterinarian
A veterinary physician, colloquially called a vet, shortened from veterinarian or veterinary surgeon , is a professional who treats disease, disorder and injury in animals....
and microbiologist
Microbiologist
A microbiologist is a scientist who works in the field of microbiology. Microbiologists study organisms called microbes. Microbes can take the form of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protists...
, born in Provins
Provins
Provins is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France.Provins, a town of medieval fairs, became a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site in 2001.-Administration:...
(Seine-et-Marne
Seine-et-Marne
Seine-et-Marne is a French department, named after the Seine and Marne rivers, and located in the Île-de-France region.- History:Seine-et-Marne is one of the original 83 departments, created on March 4, 1790 during the French Revolution in application of the law of December 22, 1789...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
).
Nocard studied veterinary medicine
Veterinary medicine
Veterinary Medicine is the branch of science that deals with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease, disorder and injury in non-human animals...
from 1868 to 1871 and (after a brief service in the Army) from 1871 to 1873 in the École Vétérinaire de Maisons-Alfort. From 1873 to 1878 he was hired as Head of Clinical Service at the same school, working with Dumesnil. In 1876 he is charged with the creation of a new journal, the Archives Vétérinaires. In this journal, Nocard will publish a great number of scientific papers, on medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, surgery
Surgery
Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...
, hygiene
Hygiene
Hygiene refers to the set of practices perceived by a community to be associated with the preservation of health and healthy living. While in modern medical sciences there is a set of standards of hygiene recommended for different situations, what is considered hygienic or not can vary between...
and jurisprudence
Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists , hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions...
. In 1878 he is approved in a public contest as Professor of Clinical and Surgical Veterinary of the École Veterinaire. Among his many pupils who became famous, was Camille Guérin
Camille Guérin
Jean-Marie Camille Guérin was a French veterinarian, bacteriologist and immunologist who, together with Albert Calmette, developed the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin , a vaccine for immunization against tuberculosis....
, co-discoverer of the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin
Bacillus Calmette-Guérin
Bacillus Calmette-Guérin is a vaccine against tuberculosis that is prepared from a strain of the attenuated live bovine tuberculosis bacillus, Mycobacterium bovis, that has lost its virulence in humans by being specially subcultured in an artificial medium for 13 years, and also prepared from...
(BCG).
In 1880 Nocard entered the laboratory of Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist born in Dole. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax. His experiments...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
as an assistant. There, he helped Pasteur and Emile Roux in their classic experiments of vaccination
Vaccination
Vaccination is the administration of antigenic material to stimulate the immune system of an individual to develop adaptive immunity to a disease. Vaccines can prevent or ameliorate the effects of infection by many pathogens...
of animals against anthrax
Anthrax
Anthrax is an acute disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Most forms of the disease are lethal, and it affects both humans and other animals...
at Pouilly-le-Fort. In 1883, he traveled to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
with Roux, Straus and Thuiller, in order to study an outbreak of cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
there, but they were unable to isolate the germ responsible for the disease. He returned on the same year to Alfort, and established a well-equipped research laboratory, in close liaison with Pasteur's. In the next three years, Nocard demonstrated his great skills in laboratory work in the new science of bacteriology
Bacteriology
Bacteriology is the study of bacteria. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classification, and characterization of bacterial species...
, by developing a number of new techniques, such as methods of harvesting blood serum
Blood serum
In blood, the serum is the component that is neither a blood cell nor a clotting factor; it is the blood plasma with the fibrinogens removed...
, new culture media
Microbiological culture
A microbiological culture, or microbial culture, is a method of multiplying microbial organisms by letting them reproduce in predetermined culture media under controlled laboratory conditions. Microbial cultures are used to determine the type of organism, its abundance in the sample being tested,...
for the bacillus of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, the introduction of anesthesia
Anesthesia
Anesthesia, or anaesthesia , traditionally meant the condition of having sensation blocked or temporarily taken away...
of large animals with intravenous chloral hydrate
Chloral hydrate
Chloral hydrate is a sedative and hypnotic drug as well as a chemical reagent and precursor. The name chloral hydrate indicates that it is formed from chloral by the addition of one molecule of water. Its chemical formula is C2H3Cl3O2....
, as well as for controlling tetanic
Tetanus
Tetanus is a medical condition characterized by a prolonged contraction of skeletal muscle fibers. The primary symptoms are caused by tetanospasmin, a neurotoxin produced by the Gram-positive, rod-shaped, obligate anaerobic bacterium Clostridium tetani...
convulsions. His scientific and academic victories were rewarded, in 1887, with the title of director of the School, and chair of infectious diseases, and, in 1888, with an invitation to become a member to the first editorial board of the Annals of the Pasteur Institute. He became a full member of the Pasteur Institute
Pasteur Institute
The Pasteur Institute is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who made some of the greatest breakthroughs in modern medicine at the time, including pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax...
in 1895. From 1892 to 1896, he strived to convince the medical and general public, in a series of communications, conferences, booklets and demonstrations, that the use of the tuberculin
Tuberculin
Tuberculin is the name given to extracts of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, M. bovis, or M. avium that is used in skin testing in animals and humans to identify a tuberculosis infection. Several types of tuberculin have been used for this, of which purified protein derivative is the most important....
of Robert Koch
Robert Koch
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch was a German physician. He became famous for isolating Bacillus anthracis , the Tuberculosis bacillus and the Vibrio cholerae and for his development of Koch's postulates....
could provide the foundations for the prevention of bovine tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
. He published in the classic La Tuberculose Bovine : ses Dangers, ses Rapports avec la Tuberculose Humaine (The Bovine Tuberculosis: Its Dangers and its Relationship with Human Tuberculosis).
Nocard’s main contribution to medicine has been the discovery of the genre of bacteria
Bacteria
Bacteria are a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...
which was named in his honor, Nocardia
Nocardia
Nocardia is a genus of weakly staining Gram-positive, catalase-positive, rod-shaped bacteria. It forms partially acid-fast beaded branching filaments . It has a total of 85 species. Some species are non-pathogenic while others are responsible for nocardiosis. Nocardia are found worldwide in soil...
. It causes nocardiosis
Nocardiosis
Nocardiosis is an infectious disease affecting either the lungs or the whole body . It is due to infection by bacterium of the genus Nocardia, most commonly Nocardia asteroides or Nocardia brasiliensis.It is most common in men, especially those with a compromised immune system...
, a disease which manifests itself mainly in animals of economic importance, such as bovine farcy, for which he discovered the first Nocardia, named by him initially as Streptothrix farcinica. The Nocardia may also cause disease in humans, particularly in immunocompromised patients, such as those with AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
.
In the field of veterinary pathology
Pathology
Pathology is the precise study and diagnosis of disease. The word pathology is from Ancient Greek , pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and , -logia, "the study of". Pathologization, to pathologize, refers to the process of defining a condition or behavior as pathological, e.g. pathological gambling....
he discovered the pathogen of endozootic mastitis
Mastitis
Mastitis is the inflammation of breast tissue. S. aureus is the most common etiological organism responsible, but S. epidermidis and streptococci are occasionally isolated as well.-Terminology:...
, Streptococcus agalactiae. Nocard also discovered the virus which causes bovine peripneumonia and studied psittacosis
Psittacosis
In medicine , psittacosis — also known as parrot disease, parrot fever, and ornithosis — is a zoonotic infectious disease caused by a bacterium called Chlamydophila psittaci and contracted from parrots, such as macaws, cockatiels and budgerigars, and pigeons, sparrows, ducks, hens, gulls and many...
.
He died on 2 August 1903 in Saint-Maurice
Saint-Maurice, Val-de-Marne
Saint-Maurice is a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris. The insane asylum Charenton was located in Saint-Maurice; it is now a psychiatric hospital.-History:...
(Marne
Marne
Marne is a department in north-eastern France named after the river Marne which flows through the department. The prefecture of Marne is Châlons-en-Champagne...
)
External links
- Edmond Nocard. Pasteur Institute (in French)
- Jean Blancou Esquisse biographique d'Edmond Nocard Bull.soc.fr.hist.méd.sci.vét 2003, 2