Pierre Delbet

Pierre Delbet (15 November 1861 to 17 July 1957) was a French surgeon born in La Ferté-Gaucher. He took his medical doctorate in 1889, became professor of clinical surgery in Paris in 1909 and was elected to the Académie de Médecine in 1921. He co-published the multi-volume Traité de chirurgie clinique et opératoire from 1901 and wrote on operative asepsis, arterial and venous surgery, trigeminal neuralgia and the treatment of fractures. He is remembered for advocating magnesium chloride: during the First World War he sought a wound cleanser that would not damage tissue, and in 1915 found that magnesium chloride worked as an antiseptic harmless to body tissue. He later argued that cancer was provoked by a lack of dietary magnesium, a claim that remains outside accepted oncology.