Joseph Rollet

Pierre Joseph Martin Rollet (1824 to 1894) was a French surgeon, venereologist and dermatologist who became professor of hygiene at the Faculty of Medicine in Lyon. He is credited with being the first to separate the soft chancre, chancroid, from the indurated syphilitic chancre, and with establishing that the incubation period of syphilis was three weeks. Born in Lagnieu, the son of a postmaster, he studied medicine in Lyon and Paris, became an intern at the Beaujon Hospital in 1845, and was admitted to the Antiquaille hospital school in 1850. He joined its service in 1855 and practised in dermato-venerology for several years, specialising in syphilis, and showed that Philippe Ricord had confounded two different diseases. In 1877 he was appointed to the chair of hygiene at the newly founded Lyon faculty. He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1864 and died suddenly on 2 August 1894, the day before he was to open a congress of dermato-venerology in Lyon.