Laveran, Charles Louis Alphonse

(b. Paris, France, 18 June 1845; d. Paris, 18 May 1922),

medicine, biology, parasitology.

Laveren studied medicine in Strasbourg, attending simultaneously the École Impériale du Service de Santé Militaire and the Faculté de Médecine, which in the 1860’s were both well-known medical schools. His doctoral dissertation, defended at Strasbourg in 1867, dealt with experimental research on the regeneration of nerves; it is still worth consulting. Laveran served as military physician in the Franco-Prussian War. In 1874, after a competitive examination, he was named professeur agrégé at the École du Val de Grâce. From 1878 to 1883 he served in Algeria. During this period he carried out research on malaria, first at Bône and then at Constantine, where on 6 November 1880, at the military hospital, he discovered the living agent of malaria. Malarial fevers had afflicted men since antiquity, and their causes had been explained by the most varied and most contradictory hypotheses (see Hackett and Manson-Bahr). In his Nobel address he gave a precise and detailed account of his discovery.

Laveran, transferred to Paris, left the malaria-infested regions; and the discovery that its vector is the mosquito was made by Sir Ronald Ross, who always admitted having been put on this track by the work of Manson and of Laveran.

Laveran’s discovery was greeted without enthusiasm. The military authorities did not recognize his merits, and he was not promoted. After having held the post of professor of military hygiene at the École du val de Grâce from 1884 to 1894 and having filled several temporary administrative positions at Lille and Nantes, he left the army in 1896 to enter the Pasteur Institute, which “was proud to welcome independent spirits desiring to undertake disinterested research” (Roux). From 1897 Laveran carried out research on parasitic blood diseases in man and animals. In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on pathogenic protozoans. He used the prize money to organize a laboratory at the Pasteur Institute for tropical medicine, which bears his name. In 1908 he founded the Sociélté de Pathologie Exotique and was its president for twelve years. The Academy of Sciences, which had acknowledged his talents in 1889 with a major prize, elected him a member in 1901. He later became a member and president of the Academy of Medicine. He published the results of his numerous investigations not only in notes and memoirs but also in voluminous monographs remarkable for both the precision of their texts and the excellence of their illustrations.

Laveran was described by his friends Calmette and Émile Roux. He was cold and distant to those who did not know him and was a tenacious and solitary worker. Yet in his private life he was known for his cheerful disposition and was devoted to literature and the fine arts. His family consisted not only of his wife and sister, but also of his colleagues at the Pasteur Institute to whom he was attached by bonds of friendship.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Laveran’s writings include “Recherches expérimentals sur la régénération des nerfs” (Strasbourg, 1867), his M.D. theses; Traite des maladies et épidémies des armées (Paris, 1875); “Sur un nouveau parasite trouvé dans le sang de plusieurs malades atteints de fièvre palustre,” in Bulletin de l’Académie de Médecine, 2nd ser., 9 (1880), 1268; “Deuxiéme note relative à un nouveau parasite trouvé dans le sang de malades atteints de la fièvre palustre,” ibid., p. 1346; “Description d’un nouveau paasite délcouvert dans le sang de malades atteints d’impaludisme,” in Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences,93 (1881), 627; Nature parasitaire des accidents de l’impaludisme, description d’un nouvean parasire trouvé dans le sang des malades atteints de fièvre palustre (Paris, 1881); Nouveaux éléments de pathologie et de clinique médicales, 2nd ed., rev. and enl., 2 vols. (Paris, 1883), written with S. Teissier—see “Paludisme,” p. 92; Du paludisme et de son hématozoaire (Paris, 1891); “Protozoa as Causes of Diseases,” in Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1901-1921 (Amsterdam, 1967), pp. 257-274; Trypanosomes et trypanosomiases, 2nd ed., rev. (Paris, 1912), written with F. Mesnil; and Leishmanioses-Kala-Azar-Bouton d’Orient, Leishmaniose américaine (Paris, 1917).

II. Secondary literature. See A. Calmette, “Le professeur Laveran,” in Bulletin de la Société de pathologie exotique,15 no. 6 (1922), 373-378; I. Fischer, Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Aerzte der letzten fünfzig Jahre, II (Berlin, 1933), p. 873; L. W. Hackett, Malaria in Europe, an Ecological Study (Oxford, 1937), p. 109; P. Manson-Bahr, “The Story of Malaria: The Drama and Actors,” in International Review of Tropical Medicine, 2 (1963), 329-390; R. Ross, Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1901-1921 (Amsterdam, 1967), pp. 19-119; J. L. Rouis, Histoire de l’École impériale du Service de santé militaire instituée en 1856 à Strasbourg (Nancy, 1898); E. Roux, “Jublilé de M. le pr. Laeran,” in Annales de l’Institut Pasteur,29 (1915), 405-414; and “A. Laveran,” ibid.,36, no. 6 (1922), 459-461; and Edmond and étienne Sergent and L. Parrot, La découverte de Laveran (Paris, 1929).

Marc Klein