Ernest Henri Besnier was a French

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...

 dermatologist and medicinal director of the Hôpital Saint-Louis

Hôpital Saint-Louis

Hôpital Saint-Louis is a hospital in Paris, France. It is part of the Assistance publique - Hôpitaux de Paris hospital system, and it is located at 1 avenue Claude-Vellefaux, in the 10th arrondissement, near the metro station: Goncourt.-External links:*...

 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...

. He was a native of Honfleur

Honfleur

Honfleur is a commune in the Calvados department in northwestern France. It is located on the southern bank of the estuary of the Seine across from le Havre and very close to the exit of the Pont de Normandie...

, département Calvados

Calvados

The French department of Calvados is part of the region of Basse-Normandie in Normandy. It takes its name from a cluster of rocks off the English Channel coast...

.

He studied medicine 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...

, where in 1857 he received his medical doctorate. In 1863 he became médecin des hôpitaux, and in 1873 succeeded Pierre-Antoine-Ernest Bazin (1807-1878) as dermatologist at the Hôpital Saint Louis. He introduced histopathology

Histopathology

Histopathology refers to the microscopic examination of tissue in order to study the manifestations of disease...

 and parasitology

Parasitology

Parasitology is the study of parasites, their hosts, and the relationship between them. As a biological discipline, the scope of parasitology is not determined by the organism or environment in question, but by their way of life...

 to the clinic, and originated the term biopsy

Biopsy

A biopsy is a medical test involving sampling of cells or tissues for examination. It is the medical removal of tissue from a living subject to determine the presence or extent of a disease. The tissue is generally examined under a microscope by a pathologist, and can also be analyzed chemically...

 for tissue samples. He was the first to describe the chronic skin changes of sarcoidosis

Sarcoidosis

Sarcoidosis , also called sarcoid, Besnier-Boeck disease or Besnier-Boeck-Schaumann disease, is a disease in which abnormal collections of chronic inflammatory cells form as nodules in multiple organs. The cause of sarcoidosis is unknown...

, and gave it the name lupus pernio.

He founded the medical journal Annales de dermatologie et de syphiligraphie with Pierre Adolphe Adrien Doyon

Pierre Adolphe Adrien Doyon

Pierre Adolphe Adrien Doyon was a French dermatologist and balneologist born in Grenoble.From 1848 he was interne des hôpitaux at Lyon, where he became associated with the hospice of Antiquaille. In 1858 he relocated to Uriage, where he participated in development of its spa...

. He attempted to balance the differences between the French and Viennese approaches to dermatological medicine, and in 1881 with Doyon, translated Moritz Kaposi's famous book on skin diseases (Pathologie und Therapie der Hautkrankheiten in Vorlesungen für praktische Ärzte und Studirende) from German into French (Leçons sur les maladies de la peau).

The eponymous Besnier's prurigo is named after a type of atopic dermatitis

Atopic dermatitis

Atopic dermatitis is an inflammatory, chronically relapsing, non-contagious and pruritic skin disorder...

that he described.