Anne-Charles Lorry

Anne-Charles Lorry was a French physician who pioneered in psychiatry and dermatology, born in Paris in 1726 and dead at Bourbonne-les-Bains in 1783. The son of a professor of law at the University of Paris, he apprenticed under Jean Astruc, physician to Louis XV, and received his doctorate in 1748. He became known in aristocratic circles after treating the infant of the Duc de Richelieu successfully and later became physician to Louis XVI. In 1775 he was one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Medicine. He has been called the founder of French dermatology: in his 1777 treatise Tractatus de Morbis Cutaneis, one of the first works on dermatology in France although written in Latin, he described 115 skin diseases and grouped them into 14 classes. He also wrote on melancholia in 1765. Gout from 1776 and later paralytic attacks and arteriosclerosis led him to retire from royal service in 1783.