Joseph Récamier

Joseph Récamier was a French physician and gynecologist, born on 6 November 1774 in Cressin-Rochefort in the Ain and died on 28 June 1852. For much of his career he was associated with the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, where he became chief physician in 1806, and he was also a professor at the Collège de France and a member of the Faculté de médecine. He is credited with popularizing several instruments of gynecological medicine, among them the curette, the vaginal speculum and the uterine sound, and the term Récamier's operation is still used for curettage of the uterus. In his 1829 treatise Recherches sur le traitement du cancer he coined the word metastasis for the spread of cancer, and in 1832 he published research on the treatment of cholera. A peak on the Joffre Peninsula in the Kerguelen Islands, Mont Docteur Récamier, was named in his honour.