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The Emergence of French Medical Entomology: The Influence of Universities, the Institut Pasteur and Military Physicians (1890–c.1938)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

Annick Opinel
Annick Opinel
Affiliation:
Annick Opinel, PhD, Centre de recherches historiques, Institut Pasteur, 28 rue du Dr Roux, 75824 Paris Cedex 15, France; e-mail: annick.opinel@pasteur.fr
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Information
Medical History , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , May 2008 , pp. 387 - 405
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Copyright © The Author(s) 2008. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 This paper deals solely with entomology in France. It takes its place alongside a more extensive and international collective work on the history of medical entomology (France, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil), Parassitologia, spring, 2008.

2 The following publications provide the background to French entomology: Ray F Smith (ed.), History of entomology, Palo Alto, Annual Reviews Inc. in cooperation with the Entomological Society of America, 1973; Ian Humphrey-Smith, The French school of parasitology. Sept siècles de parasitologie en France, Paris, Société française de parasitologie, 1993; Jean Gouillard, Histoire des entomologistes français, 1750–1950, Paris, Boubée, 2004; Philippe Jaussaud and Edouard Raoul Brygoo, Du Jardin au Muséum en 516 biographies, Paris, Editions du Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, 2004; Yves Cambefort, Des coléoptères, des collections et des hommes, Paris, Editions du Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, Paris 2006.

3 See Cambefort, op. cit., note 2 above, for an example of the diversity and specialization of collections concerning coleoptera.

4 Entomology was gradually introduced in zoology courses at the University but occupied a minor place at least until Jean-Henri Fabre's works on the biology of social insects became widely known after 1890.

5 Pierre-André Latreille, Cours d'entomologie, ou de l'Histoire naturelle des crustacés, des arachnides, des myriapodes et des insectes, Paris, Roret, 1831.

6 Cambefort, op. cit. note 2 above, p. 126.

7 Jean-Henri Fabre, Souvenirs entomologiques. Etudes sur l'instinct et les moeurs des insectes, Paris, C Delagrave, 1879–1907; see also Cambefort, op. cit. note 2 above, p. 44.

8 D Cauvet, Nouveaux éléments d'histoire naturelle médicale, 3rd ed., Paris, Baillière et fils, 1885.

9 J W Meigen, Nouvelle classification des mouches à deux ailes, (Diptera L.) d'après un plan tout nouveau, Paris, J J Fuchs, 1800.

10 Justin Macquart, Diptères exotiques nouveaux ou peu connus, Paris, Roret, 1838–48; idem, Histoire naturelle des insectes, Paris, Roret, 1834–35.

11 J B Robineau-Desvoidy, Essais sur les myodaires, Paris, 1830, and idem, Diptéres des environs de Paris, Auxerre, Perriquet, 1853.

12 J M F Bigot,‘Essai d'une classification générale et synoptique de l'ordre des insectes Diptères [VII mémoire]’, Annales de la Société entomologique de France, 1859, 7 (3): 201–31. A member of the Société entomologique de France, Bigot published numerous articles, mostly in the Annales and Bulletin of that society, describing Diptera of worldwide origin. His reference collection was purchased in 1893 by an English dipterologist, M G H Verrall. No reference collection of exotic Diptera thus existed at the Natural History Museum. Bulletin de la Société entomologique de France, séances du 26 avril 1893, page clxxxvii et séance du 14 juin 1893, page ccxix; ‘Diptères ccxix et clxxxvii’, Annales de la Société d'Entomologie de France, 1893.

13 E Gobert, Catalogue des diptères de France, Caen, Delesques, 1887; E Séguy, Atlas des diptères de France, Belgique, Suisse … aquarelles et dessins par E. Séguy, Paris, Boubée, 1951.

14 C Laveissière and A Challier, Côte d'Ivoire, carte de la répartition des glossines, Paris, ORSTROM, 1980.

15 See Clement Ramsdale and Keith Snow, ‘A preliminary checklist of European mosquitoes’, http://www.uel.ac.uk/mosquito/issue5/checklist.htm.

16 Even in 1910, despite numerous publications readily available, specimens were most often sent to the Museum for proper identification.

17 In his Nobel lecture in 1902, Ronald Ross said that, until 1898, he was unable to obtain sufficiently precise documentation for the identification of mosquitoes: “Before leaving England I had made many attempts to obtain literature on mosquitoes, especially the Indian ones, but without success except for some brief notes in encyclopedias.” Ronald Ross, ‘Researches on malaria’, Nobel lecture, 12 Dec. 1902, from Nobel lectures, physiology or medicine 1901–1921, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1967, p. 38, available on http://nobelprize.org). He thus provided his own descriptions: “Brindled mosquitoes”, later identified as belonging to the genus Stegomyia; “grey mosquitoes”, now Culex; and “spotted wings mosquitoes”—Anopheles. The genera had already been described, but the correct identification of a given specimen was a difficult task.

18 Jaime L Benchimol, Magali Romero Sá, Adolpho Lutz, Obra completa, 4 vols, Rio de Janeiro, Fiocruz, 2006, vol. 2.

19 “En revanche, le rôle parasitaire des animaux et des végétaux inférieurs devenait de plus en plus manifeste et sollicitait très vivement l'attention”, Raphaël Blanchard, ‘La chaire d'histoire naturelle médicale de la Faculté de médecine de Paris; son histoire’, Archives de Parasitologie, 1907, 11 (3): 481–92, on p. 485.

20 Raphaël Blanchard founded the Société zoologique de France (1876). He worked in Charles Robin's laboratory on the histology of various animals between 1876 and 1878, and spent a year (1877–78) in Austria and Germany studying embryology and comparative anatomy. His MD dissertation was related to work he had carried out in Paul Bert's laboratory on the anaesthetic properties of nitrogen monoxide (1880). From 1883 he taught medical zoology at the faculty of medicine in Paris. He does not appear to have practised medicine or parasitology, but as having worked, on the scientific side, on invertebrates like leeches, and, at the institutional level, where he made important changes in the organization of medical teaching and zoological taxonomy.

21 R Blanchard, Traité de zoologie médicale, 2 vols, Paris, J B Baillière, 1889–1890.

22 See R Blanchard, ‘L'Institut de médecine coloniale, histoire de sa fondation’, Archives de Parasitologie, 1902, 6 (4): 585–603. The Institut de médecine coloniale was founded in 1902 after three years of negociation between the faculty of medicine in Paris and the Union coloniale. Initially intended to be set up in the Maison de convalescence des militaires coloniaux (Croix verte) at Sèvres (close to Paris) where Blanchard would organize a small laboratory with Guiart and Neveu-Lemaire, the project was then halted for complex reasons. As a temporary measure, the faculty of medicine initially provided space for courses and laboratories. The problem of clinical teaching was acute because Blanchard could not find a hospital for patients with tropical diseases. Under a local regulation, the public Parisian hospitals were not allowed to treat patients suffering from tropical diseases. The result of this was that, at least in Paris, civilians returning from the colonies could be treated only in private hospitals. The Institut Pasteur hospital, newly built, was proposed. But, in spite of Roux's (the Institut Pasteur's director) favourable attitude, this was impossible, because the hospital had been built specifically to treat contagious diseases, and it could not be used for other purposes. This may be an disingenuous explanation since several anti-parasite drugs were soon tested at the Institut Pasteur hospital on patients with malaria and sleeping sickness. Blanchard finally found a private hospital in Auteuil, the Hôpital des Dames Françaises, to accommodate patients and for proper clinical teaching.

23 No details are available after 1920. Moreover, Emile Brumpt, who was in charge of the Institut de médecine coloniale after 1919, never worked with military institutions. The Institut was still running in 1938, and Lucien Brumpt (1910–99), Emile Brumpt's son, himself a parasitologist, had just been named chef de travaux pratiques.

24 Blanchard, op. cit., note 22 above.

25 R Blanchard, ‘L'Entomologie et la médecine’, in Congrès international d'Entomologie, Bruxelles, 1910, Brussels, Hayez, 1912, pp. 114–23.

26 Archives IP, BLR 4, boîte Blanchard 4, Raphaël Blanchard, ‘Coup d’œil sur l'Institut de médecine coloniale’, Archives de parasitologie, 1911, 14: 452–71.

27 Blanchard, see note 27 above, p. 458. “Sans la connaissance precise des conditions suivant les quelles de tels animaux interviennent dans l’étiologie des maladies tropicales, il n'y a point de prophylaxie rationnelle.”

28 As well as being a teacher, Brumpt was an important researcher in parasitology, who had an especially wide entomological and biological knowledge of vectors. He was also active as a physician. See Annick Opinel and Gabriel Gachelin, ‘Emile Brumpt's contribution to the characterization of parasitic diseases in Brazil (1909–1914)’, in A Opinel and G Gachelin (eds), Parasitic diseases in Brazil: the construction of parasitology, XIX–XXth centuries, special issue of Parassitologia, 2005, 47: 299–307. For the funding of his numerous missions around the world (most of them not supported by the faculty of medicine in Paris), see Emile Brumpt, Titres et travaux scientifiques (Paris, Masson, 1934), and, as an example, A Opinel and G Gachelin, ‘The Rockefeller Foundation and the prevention of malaria in Corsica 1923–1951: the support to the French parasitologist Emile Brumpt’, Parassitologia, 2004, 46: 287–302.

29 After returning from Africa, Brumpt became chef des travaux pratiques de parasitologie at the Institut de médecine coloniale in 1903, a minor position, and was appointed secrétaire général in 1919 after Blanchard's death.

30 Brumpt participated as naturalist and physician in the expediton organized by Viscount Robert du Bourg de Bozas, which crossed equatorial Africa from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. See E Brumpt, Mission du Bourg de Bozas. De la Mer Rouge à l'Atlantique, à travers l'Afrique tropicale, Paris, Rudeval, 1903.

31 Brumpt, op. cit., note 28 above.

32 See A Opinel and G Gachelin, ‘Le parasitologue, l'anophèle et les gambusia : le paludisme en Corse (1925–1930)’, in P Bourdelais and O Faure (eds), Les nouvelles pratiques de santé, Paris, Belin, 2005, pp. 195–210.

33 E Brumpt, ‘Maladie du sommeil et mouche tsé-tsé’, C. R. Soc. Biol., 27 juin 1903, 55: 839.

34 E Brumpt (ed.), Enseignement complémentaire de la parasitologie appliquée au diagnostic, à l'hygiène et l’épidémiologie. Faculté de médecine de Paris, laboratoire de parasitologie, Paris, Masson, 1922.

35 Maurice Neveu-Lemaire (1872–1951), Brumpt's chef de travaux from 1920 to 1935, was a physician, agrégé d'histoire naturelle, and a graduate of Liverpool School of Tropical Diseases and Medical Parasitology. He taught at both the Institut de médecine coloniale in Paris and, in 1926, at the Ecole de malariologie at the University of Paris. He wrote a Traité d'helminthologie médicale et vétérinaire in 1936 and a Traité d'entomologie médicale et vétérinaire in 1938.

36 Maurice Langeron (1874–1950), physician and mycologist, joined Blanchard's laboratory in 1903 and started working with Brumpt in 1906. He was the founder, along with Brumpt and Neveu-Lemaire, of the Annales de parasitologie humaine et comparée in 1923.

37 Described in Brumpt (ed.), op. cit., note 34 above, p. 4.

38 The notion of “hôtes vecteurs” appears in Brumpt (ed.), Enseignement complémentaire (op. cit., note 34 above). It is not mentioned in the 1913, 1922 and 1927 editions of his Traité de parasitologie but does appear in the 1936 and 1949 editions (see the definition in Traité de parasitologie, Paris, Masson, 1936, p. 24).

39 Brumpt, op. cit., note 28 above, p. 32.

40 Ibid., pp. 33–8.

41 Opinel and Gachelin, ‘The Rockefeller Foundation’, op. cit., note 28 above.

42 Archives de l'Institut Pasteur (hereafter AIP), fonds Mesnil, Box MES 02. In an unidentified journal, Félix Mesnil celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of Plasmodium by Alphonse Laveran and acknowledges Metchnikoff's interest in the topic. He says that Metchnikoff had engaged Paul-Louis Simond to work on coccidias.

43 Alfred Giard (1846–1908) was trained as a zoologist by Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers. He taught zoology at the University of Lille and at the Ecole normale supérieure in Paris, and set up his own marine biology laboratory at Wimereux in 1874. He was president of the Société entomologique de France from 1896 until his death. He was a follower of Lamarckism.

44 They published a reference book together, two editions of which were published: F Mesnil and A Laveran, Trypanosomes et trypanosomiases, Paris, Masson, 1904 and 1912.

45 Ilana Löwy, Virus, moustiques et modernité: la fièvre jaune au Brésil entre science et politique, Paris, Editions des archives contemporaines, 2001.

46 The chronology has been reconstituted by Sandra Legout, ‘La famille pasteurienne. Le personnel scienti-fique permanent de l'Institut Pasteur de Paris entre 1889 et 1914’, Paris, Mémoire de DEA, EHESS, 1999.

47 AIP, Fonds Ramon, Box RAM 41-43, Lessons 65 to 76 course 1910–1911.

48 The courses given at the Institut Pasteur are kept as bound books in the Archives de l'Institut Pasteur, with no shelf-mark. The series is complete from 1922 to the present.

49 A series of lectures, presumably dated 1948, since the most recent reference quoted is in 1947, entitled Cours Roubaud, Laboratoire d'entomologie médicale et zoologie tropicale, Institut Pasteur may have followed the Roubaud-Mesnil course. It showed a shift in Roubaud's thinking concerning medical entomology. The previously integrated description of parasite and disease had virtually disappeared in favour of a specialized field of insect sciences, in which medical entomology was used as the basis for a theoretical discussion of the adaptation processes of certain insects. Roubaud started the course with a definition: “The object of medical entomology in broad terms is the study of arthropods or articulated animals which may harm human or domestic animal life, as well as clarifying rationally their pathogenic action and setting up effective means of intervention.” (“L'Entomologie médicale a pour objet l’étude, au sens large, des Arthropodes ou Articulés susceptibles de nuire à la vie de l'homme ou des animaux domestiques, d’éclairer rationnellement leur action pathogène et de lui apporter des mesures d'intervention efficaces.”) (AIP, Fonds du service d'entomologie médicale, Box SEM 1, Cours Roubaud, fascicule 1, cours 1, p. 1). This course was now a genuine entomology course organized around the notion, familiar to Roubaud from his thesis, of the physiology of insects resulting from their adaptation to distinctive features of an ecosystem. The titles of the lectures were examples of that attitude: ‘L'adaptation hématophage’, ‘Tropismes hématophages’, ‘Evolution chez les hexapodes hématophages’, and ‘Nutrition et ponte’ (Cours Roubaud, see above).

50 Articles published jointly by Mesnil and Roubaud: ‘Sur la sensibilité du chimpanzé au paludisme humain’, C. R. Acad. Sci., 1917, 165: 39; ‘Insectes et infections. Les conditions de l'infection aux armées’, C. R. Soc. Biol., 16 Nov. 1918, 81: 1029; ‘Essais d'inoculation du paludisme au chimpanzé’, Ann. Inst. Pasteur, 1920, 34: 466–79; see also Emile Roubaud, Titres et travaux scientifiques, Laval, Barnéoud, 1935.

51 Claude Lapresle, ‘Le rôle de l'hôpital de l'Institut Pasteur dans l'application à la médecine de découvertes fondamentales’, in Michel Morange (ed.), L'institut Pasteur: contributions à son histoire, Paris, La Découverte, 1991, pp. 45–51.

52 Roux, founder of the Cours de microbie technique, was at that time sous-directeur (1896–1904) then directeur of the Institut Pasteur (1904–1933).

53 The Instituts Pasteur d'Outre-mer (IPOMs) were created from 1888, date of the establishment of the Institut Pasteur in Paris; examples are: French Indochina: Saigon, 1891; North Africa: Algiers, 1909; Sub-Saharan Africa: Brazzaville, 1908. Today, a network of twenty-two institutions remains, of which nineteen bear the name of Pasteur. The IPOMs were very close to the local governments, as they were in fact created to support French public health and prophylaxis policy in the colonies. See Jean-Pierre Dedet, Les Instituts Pasteur d'Outre-mer. Cent vingt ans de microbiologie française dans le monde, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2002.

54 Edmond Sergent, Les travaux scientifiques de l'Institut Pasteur en Algérie de 1900 à 1962, Paris, PUF, 1964, p. 13.

55 Löwy, op. cit., note 45 above, pp. 12–17, 68–83.

56 The military hierarchy in the colonies was quite complex. The services of public health depended on the local colonial administration: in Africa on the government of French West Africa (encompassing Senegal, Sudan, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Dahomey (now Benin)) created on 15 June 1895; and on the government of French Equatorial Africa created in 1908 (comprising Gabon, Moyen-Congo, Oubangui-Chari, and Tchad). These governments were under the administrative supervision of the Ministry of the Colonies, created in 1894 from a part of the Ministry of the Navy. The health service for the military was under the control of both the Ministry of the Colonies (Direction des services militaires, third section) and the Ministry of War. Public health and the sanitary police in the colonies came under the control of another department of the Ministry of the Colonies, the Inspection générale du Service de Santé. (Henri Mariol, La chronologie coloniale contenant les dates principales de l'histoire, de l'organisation, de la législation et de l'administration des colonies françaises des origines à nos jours, Paris, Larose, 1921.) The colonial troops and the officers of the Corps de santé militaire came under the authority of the Ministry of War (see article 11 of the organization and composition of colonial troops). The Ministry of War worked in close collaboration with the Ministry of the Colonies (the phrase “après entente avec le ministère des colonies” is often used in official documents), so the health services were doubly supervised. In addition to this complex organization, the colonial troops were under the authority of the governor-generals of each colony (Loi sur l'organisation des troupes colonials, 7 juillet 1900).

57 AIP, Fonds Simond Box SIM 12, File ‘Simond Marseille 1906–1911, Correspondance’. Letter dated 28 June 1908 from Charles Grall, Inspecteur général du service de santé, Ministère de la guerre, to Simond: “Mr Roux has taken most active steps on your behalf, and the people in charge will remember this when the time comes”. (“ M. Roux a fait en votre faveur les démarches les plus actives et les grands chefs s'en souviendront au moment propice”). Roux's support of Simond is also obvious in a letter from Grall to Simond (then in Constantinople) dated 19 Sept. 1913, indicating that Roux strongly supported Simond's nomination in Indochina. In a letter to Marchoux dated 26 Nov. 1906, Grall says that Roux is strongly in favour of Marchoux's promotion. In the end Marchoux retired from the army and entered the Institut Pasteur in 1906 as head of the microbiological department.

58 Gustave Martin, Alexandre Leboeuf, Emile Roubaud, La maladie du sommeil au Congo français, with a preface by Emile Roux, Paris, Société de géographie, 1909.

59 Roubaud, Titres et travaux, op. cit., note 50 above. AIP, Fonds de la Société de pathologie exotique, ‘Letters from Roubaud’, Roubaud to Bouvier, 16 Jan. 1908, describing the reproduction of G. palpalis and detailing his work on the presence of trypanosomes outside the salivary glands, etc.

60 A Opinel, Field medical entomology: the studies on Glossina flies by Emile Roubaud in Africa, 1906–1912, in preparation.

61 AIP, Fonds Roubaud, Box Rub1.

62 AIP, Fonds de la Société de pathologie exotique, ‘Roubaud's letters’. Roubaud to Mesnil, 20 April 1910: description of trypanosomes adhering to the outside of Glossina salivary glands. Roubaud to Mesnil, 20 March 1910: discussion of the existence of “races” of Glossina flies, indistinguishable morphologically but resulting from the adaptation of the insect to different temperatures and humidity. A scientific project aimed at adapting Glossina flies to a precise environment thereby making the insect unable to transmit Trypanosoma, was also discussed. These reflexions are to be compared with the course Roubaud intended to give in 1948.

63 Roubaud, Titres et travaux, op. cit., note 50 above.

64 André Lwoff, Recherches biochimiques sur la nutrition des protozoaires, Paris, Masson, 1932. My thanks to Gabriel Gachelin for having brought this point to my attention.

65 AIP. Constantin Toumanoff (1903–1967), online biography, Institut Pasteur website, http://www.pasteur.fr/infosci/archives/tou0.html.

66 A history of the Pharo school can be found in the anniversary book by Eric Deroo, Antoine Champeaux, Jean-Marie Milleliri, Patrick Quéguiner, L’école du Pharo: cent ans de médecine outre-mer, 1905–2005, Panazol, Charles Lavauzelle, 2005.

67 AIP, Fonds Simond, Box SIM 12, file ‘P.L. Simond, Marseille 1906–1911’, Simond's handwritten course.

68 C Mathis and M Léger, Recherches de parasitologie et de pathologie humaines et animales au Tonkin, Paris, Masson, 1911.

69 For the Jamot expedition, see C Mathis, L'oeuvre des pastoriens en Afrique noire: Afrique Occidentale Française, Paris, PUF, 1946, pp. 218–29.

70 For instance G. palpalis had been identified as early as 1830 by Robineau-Desvoidy (Emile Brumpt, Précis de parasitologie, Paris, Masson, 1922, p. 861).

71 It should be remembered that Roux was clearly involved in most of the decisions concerning expeditions and the study of vectors in relation to pathologies, thus defining a major research field of the Institut Pasteur.

72 Campaigns against sleeping sickness between 1916 and 1939 are good examples of that kind of action.