Léon Eugène Bérard

Léon Eugène Bérard (1870 to 1956) was a French surgeon and cancer specialist who spent his career in Lyon. Born in Morez, he studied medicine in Lyon, took his doctorate in 1896 and won his agrégation in surgery in 1898. He became a hospital surgeon in Lyon in 1901 and professor of clinical surgery in 1914. From 1923 to 1940 he directed the cancer centre in Lyon, which was later renamed the Centre Léon-Bérard in his honour. He is remembered as an early user of radium to treat cancers of the lining of the mouth and of the cervix. His writings include a 1896 study of goitre surgery, a 1899 treatise on actinomycosis written with Antonin Poncet, and books on cancer of the oesophagus and surgical diseases of the thyroid. His elder brother was the Hellenist Victor Bérard.