Joseph Souberbielle

Joseph Souberbielle (1754 to 1846) was a French surgeon born in Pontacq who spent most of his career in Paris. A relative of the surgeon Jean Baseilhac, who strongly influenced his career, he moved to Paris in 1774 and became a student of Pierre-Joseph Desault. He worked first as a military physician and then served as chief surgeon for the victors of the Bastille in 1789. In 1793 he sat as a juror of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and he was a close associate of Maximilien Robespierre, narrowly surviving the guillotine after the events of 9 Thermidor in 1794. Medically he is known for lithotomy, the surgical removal of bladder stones, and especially the suprapubic method, with more than 1200 such operations credited to him. Like Baseilhac he advocated a caustic paste containing arsenic for cauterizing cancers, which found particular use on facial ulcers. His writings include a treatise on diseases of the urinary tract published in 1813, accounts of suprapubic cystotomy, and a 1835 collection of papers on lithotomy and lithotripsy.