Just Lucas-Championnière

Just Lucas-Championnière was a French surgeon, born in 1843 at Avilly-Saint-Léonard and died in Paris in 1913. He began studying medicine in Paris in 1860, took his medical doctorate in 1870 and passed the agrégation in 1874, the year he qualified as a hospital surgeon. Over his career he worked at a succession of Paris hospitals, among them Cochin, Lariboisière, Tenon, Saint-Louis, Beaujon and the Hôtel-Dieu, and he retired from hospital surgery in 1906. As a student he travelled to Glasgow to learn antisepsis from Joseph Lister, and he went on to introduce antiseptic surgery to France, publishing an influential book on the subject in 1876 that was later translated into English. He also contributed to the treatment of bone fractures and hernias, and his study of trepanation showed that prehistoric flint tools could cut a trephine hole in a skull in under fifty minutes. He joined the Académie de Médecine in 1885 and edited the Journal de médecine et de chirurgie pratiques for many years. A form of pseudomembranous bronchitis is known as Lucas-Championnière's disease.