Jacques-Joseph Grancher

Jacques-Joseph Grancher (1843 to 1907) was a French pediatrician born in Felletin in the Creuse. He began his medical studies in Paris in 1862, worked as an assistant at several of the city hospitals including the Hôpital des Enfants Malades, learned histological methods in private laboratories and directed a pathological anatomy laboratory at Clamart. From 1885 until his death he directed the Hôpital des Enfants Malades, and in 1900 he became vice-chairman of the board of the Pasteur Institute. He is remembered for his research on tuberculosis and for pioneering safeguards against childhood tuberculosis, advocating isolation and antisepsis. With Jules Comby and Antoine Marfan he published a treatise on the diseases of childhood in 1897. In 1885 he and Alfred Vulpian helped persuade Louis Pasteur to carry out the first successful rabies vaccination, on Joseph Meister, and he later defended the vaccination before the Académie de Médecine.