Nicolas Maurice Arthus

Nicolas Maurice Arthus (1862 to 1945) was a French immunologist and physiologist whose name is attached to the Arthus reaction, a localized inflammatory response. Born in Angers, he studied medicine in Paris and took his doctorate in 1886. He became professor of physiology at the University of Fribourg in 1896, returned to France to work at the Pasteur Institute in 1900, taught for a time in Marseille, and from 1907 held the chair of physiology at the University of Lausanne for twenty-five years. With Calixte Pages he showed in 1890 that calcium is essential to blood coagulation, and he is best known for his work on anaphylaxis, which he gathered in a 1921 book linking anaphylaxis and immunity. He also studied snake venom. He died in Fribourg in 1945.