Arthur Fallot

Étienne-Louis Arthur Fallot (1850 to 1911) was a French physician, born in Sète in the Hérault. He began medical school in Montpellier in 1867 and later, while living in Marseille, wrote a thesis on pneumothorax. In 1888 he was made Professor of Hygiene and Legal Medicine in Marseille. In the same year he described in detail the four anatomical characteristics of the congenital heart defect that now bears his name, tetralogy of Fallot, a condition responsible for what was called blue baby syndrome. He is remembered chiefly for that description. The source gives no further biographical detail, so this entry records only his schooling, his thesis, his professorship and the 1888 description, and it makes no claim about the rest of his career.