Émile Marchoux
Émile Marchoux ( born March 14, 1862 in Saint -Amant -de- Boixe; † August 19, 1943 in Paris) was a French specialist in tropical medicine.
Marchoux studied medicine in Paris and graduated in 1887 with a thesis on typhoid epidemics among Marines in Lorient from. He then joined the Marine Corps of doctors and moved with its founding in 1890 in the colonial medical service ( Corps de Santé colonial ). First, he was then transferred to Dahomey by Cochinchina, where he was responsible for the vaccination of the native population against smallpox. 1893 Marchoux returned from Indochina back, applied at the Institut Pasteur and was hired by Louis Pasteur in person. He was assigned to the laboratory by Émile Roux, where he succeeded to produce a serum against anthrax. In 1896 he was sent to Africa, where he founded the first microbiological laboratory Africa in Senegal Saint- Louis.
At that time there were in colonial medicine, the tendency to attribute all the fevers of malaria. Marchoux worked out that in Africa, many other causes exist: yellow fever, amoebic dysentery, and various tick-borne diseases. He described the life cycle of the common malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum in Senegal, which also caused the worst malarial form. Its publication in 1897 in the Annales de l'Institut Pasteur was the first microscopic study of the malaria parasite, which had originated in the tropics. Further research dealt with the role of pneumococcal pneumonia in the African context. Also Marchoux could for the first time demonstrate meningococcus in Africa south of the Sahara even particularly common cause of meningitis disease.
In 1900 broke out in Senegal, a yellow fever epidemic, and simultaneously discovered a group of U.S. doctors in Havana the transmitters of the disease, the yellow fever mosquito (actually a rediscovery, since the work of Carlos Finlay had been forgotten ). Marchoux was sent by the then Colonial Office as part of a French medical mission to Havana and Brazil. Within four years, the scientists were able to show that the yellow fever pathogen, through bacteria-proof filter was a " filterable virus " that is filterable. The pathogen could be detected during the first four days of the disease in the blood, and its growth in the mosquitoes was dependent on the temperature. Through this research was to understand why the inhabitants of cooler areas suffered at intermediate altitudes less to yellow fever. The French were also involved in the successful campaign to rid Rio de Janeiro from yellow fever; Marchoux was nominated for an honorary citizen of the city.
1905 Marchoux returned back from Brazil and left the colonial medical service to get back fully to work at the Institute Pasteur. He was first chief of laboratory, then Head of the laboratory of Metchnikoff (Nobel Prize 1908 ), then at Laveran, as this 1907 was awarded the Nobel Prize. Marchoux employed at this time first with a poultry disease that raged in Brazil and to which he has brought to the test material from his trip. He was able to demonstrate a spirochete as the causative agent, which was transmitted by ticks - the first example of a transmitted in this way blood disease.
However, his preferred area of research was leprosy. Since it was not possible to cultivate the pathogen established Marchoux with the rat, an animal model. Through his studies, it became clear that leprosy was less infectious than tuberculosis, so the usual segregation of leprosy sufferers could not be medically justified. Marchoux could in Bamako ( Mali today ) establish an institute for the study of leprosy, which was named after him after his death (now the Centre National d' à la Lutte contre la Appui Maladie, CNAM ). As a leprosy expert Marchoux also advised the League of Nations and was eventually appointed President of the International Leprosy Society.
1925 Marchoux was elected to the Academy of Medicine. Since its establishment, he was a member of the Academy of Colonial Sciences, 1931-32, he also presided. He was a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour.