[Medicinal plants and symbols in the medieval mystic altarpiece]. / Les plantes médicinales et symboliques dans les jardins mystiques des retables médiévaux.

The medieval mystic altarpiece towers above the altar table. It is linked to the evocation of a religious mystery beyond our faculty of reasoning. Symbolism of an enclosed garden evokes the image of the Heavenly Garden isolated by a wall from the rest of earthly world. In this mystic chiefly Rhenan altarpiece the enclosed garden is that of Virgin Mary who in the Middle Ages was likened to the spouse in the song of songs. The Blessed Virgin is painted with flowers, lily, rose, violet, lily of the valley. Most of these are medicinal plants in order to implore a faith healing for the believers. All in all about fifty plants are showed on Rhenan altarpieces and on 14th century mystic altarpieces almost contemporary of Issenheim's altarpiece, some Italian, some Rhenan.

[The unicorn and the unicorn horn among apothecaries and physicians]. / La licorne et la corne de licorne chez les apothicaires et les médecins.

In the 4th century A.D. the first unicorn was shown as a little horse with a twisted horn and was completely different from the Oriental one described by Marco Polo. The new unicorn appeared during the 4th century A.D. in Alexandria. This animal enamoured of purity was used as a Christian symbol of purity and sacrifice and adornment of churches like in Lyons in the 13th century. In the 15th & 17th centuries the unicorn was found again in famous tapestries like La Dame B la Licorne as it meant courage, speed and purity. Since the 6th century the powder of unicorn horn was used as a medicine or a drug against poisoning. Depictions of unicorn can be found in chemist's signs, engravings or paintings until the 19th century.

[Welcome by the Academy of sciences, letters and arts of Lyon (with Guy de Clauliac, 1300-1368 Jules Guiart, 1870-1945)]. / Accueil par l'Acad6mie des sciences, lettres et beaux-arts de lyon (avec Guy de Chauliac, 1300-1368 et Jules Guiart, 1870-1945).

Jules Guiart was born in Château-Thierry in 1870. He took over from Louis Lortet at the chair of Parasitology and Natural History in Lyons while Jules Courmont took over at the chair of Medicine and Bacteriology in 1906. Guiart taught History of Medicine in Lyons and in Romania. He succeeded Lacassagne as chairman of the Academy of Lyons in 1926. Nowadays he looks like a symbolical link between the Society and the historians of medicine.

[Mural paintings of Jean Coquet at the Desgenette Hospital in Lyon]. / Les peintures murales de Jean Coquet de l'hôpital Desgenettes a Lyon.

René Nicolas Dufriche Desgenettes (1762-1837) became famous through two historical events: the first and most famous one is where he proved his courage by inoculating himself with the plague during the Syrian campaign in 1799; the second one, rarely represented in paintings, happened during the Russian retreat in 1812 when he was freed thanks to his reputation. Two wide fresco paintings facing each other in the hall of Desgenettes, a hospital built during World War Two, are witnesses of these two major events. Jean Coquet (1907-1990), a decorator, painter and glassblower, who worked at the Beaux-Arts School of Lyon, first as a decoration teacher than as its director, painted these two works of art. In 1946, he inserted them into an ornamental group constituted of ironworks, furniture, stained glass and ceramics. Two paintings from Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835) inspired these works: Bonaparte visiting the plague-stricken of Jaffa (1804) and Napoleon on the battlefield of Eylau (1808). With their academic composition and daring stylization those two frescoes represent in a modern and original way Desgenettes' life style, an archetype of what the military doctor is.

[The surgeon René Guillet (1913-2002).His actions in the hilly regions of France in Aian and Haut-Jura in 1944]. / Le chirurgien René Guillet (1913-2002). Son action dans les maquis de l'Ain et du Haut-Jura en 1944.

In 1943, René Guillet, a young surgeon in the Department of Professor Mallet-Guy, took part in the Resistance as he helped the wounded men in the hospital of Edouard Herriot. René Guillet joined the French Army of the Resistance on June 6, 1944. Then, in July 1944, he took care of the wounded men in the hospital of Oyonnax with doctor Parker, an English surgeon in the French hospital in London. Although it was very dangerous, the two doctors managed to transfer the wounded to Geneva.

[The plants in the Issenheim's altarpiece]. / Les plantes du retable d'Lssenheim.

On the decorated panels an altar, the so-called "retable d'Issenheim", in Colmar, several painted plants can be easily identified.

[François de Lapeyronie, from Montpellier (1678-1747). "Surgery restorer" and universal spirit. The soul, Musc, rooster eggs]. / François de Lapeyronie, de Montpellier (1678-1747). "Restaurateur de la chirurgie" et esprit universel l'ame, le musc, les oeufs de coq.

François de Lapeyronie was a master in surgery in 1695 in Paris then in 1717 and rewarded with the rank of Medical Doctor of the University of Reims. The authors try to underline his intelligence and his broadmindedness through three publications about the centre of the soul in the corpus callosum, the anatomical dissection of a kind of stone marten and the scientific research of the so called 'egg of cock'.

[The disfigured men represented by the great painters (O. Dix - G. Grosz - R. Freida.) Disfiguration in the history of art]. / Les gueules cassés représentées a par de grands peintres (O. Dix - G. Grosz - R. Freida) la défiguration en histoire de l'art .

Sophie Delaporte's book, Philippe Paillard's, Chantal Roussels's novels and Dupeyron's movie underline the difficulties of repairing physical and moral sufferings of the "disfigured men" wounded during the Great War. Beside medical and technical didactic aimed drawings the exhibition of wasted, mutilated or out of repair faces remains little known. In France, Germany or Great Britain there are many artists who took part in war. Among the artists the French painter Raphael Freida and some German expressionists like Otto Dix, Max Beckmann or George Grosz are the most famous. Their works are often confidential, set apart in the museums and showed in rare exhibitions in Great Britain and the United States of America. The sight of ruined faces inspired such horror that the artists depicted it only exceptionally and with discretion, before 1914. Without doubt it is the fear of touching the privacy of the face which is a part of the human identity. There are no "disfigured men" in the countless religious paintings of torture, neither in the Disasters of Warfrom painters or engravers like Goya or Jacques Callot.

[Dr. Edmond Locard (1877-1966), the Sherlock Holmes of Lyons]. / Le Dr Edmond Locard (1877-1966), le Sherlock Holmes lyonnais.

Doctor Edmond Locard (1877-1966), a French forensic scientist, a disciple of famous Professor Alexandre Lacassagne, created in Lyons, in 1910, the first French laboratory of technical police. During more than fourty years, he used and developed new scientific techniques (fingerprint identification, study of marks and dust...) in order to help the policemen and judges to solve the most horrible crimes.

[Three Copt mummies of Antinoe in Lyon]. / Trois momies coptes d'Antino6 à Lyon.

Three mummies--one of a woman and two of a woman and a child--are nowadays presented in the Museum of Anatomy Testut-Latarjet in Lyon. They have been brought in 1901 from Egypt to the Museum Guimet of Lyon and after a few years, they have been given to Professor Testut and studied by Louis Paul Fisher and Frederique Cantero in a thesis of medicine of Lyon (1991). They have been examined by x-rays non-invasive scanning by Professor Michel Bochut. Finally Professor Jean-Claude Goyon, chairman in the "Maison de l'Orient", proposed to date them from the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century, after the designs and the ornaments of the clothes.

[Military surgeon Henry Gabrielle (September 1887 - April 1968)]. / Le Médecin Général Henry Gabrielle (Septembre 1887 - Avril 1968).

As a military surgeon Henry Gabrielle had a heroic behaviour during the World War I. He was appointed professor of surgery at the hospital Val-de-Grâce in 1919 and in 1926 he became professor of anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine in Lyon. His action in the French Resistance was so significant that he was appointed Health Director of the Region Rhône Alpes. As president of the hospitals of Lyon from 1952 his role of organisation was important.

[Jacques Lisfranc de Saint-Martin (1787-1847)]. / Jacques Lisfranc de Saint-Martin (1787-1847).

For 22 years Jacques Lisfranc was the famous surgeon at the Hospital La Pitté in Paris. He was born at Saint-Paul-en-Jarez in 1787, a village sited between Saint-Etienne and Lyon. After his Internship in Lyon he became Dupuytren's student in Paris. In his thesis, he described Dupuytren's operation of the removal of the lower jawbone. In 1815 he succeeded in new surgical operations on the shoulder and on the foot. In 1830 he was the first to perform the ablation of rectum's carcinoma and became the most famous gynaecological surgeon. He could not become a professor of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris because of his enmity with Dupuytren. Nevertheless he was only interested in surgery and the care for his patients. On his tomb, one can read his favourite maxim: "Surgery is bright when operating but it is still brighter when there is no blood and mutilation and yet leads to the patient's recovery".

[Some French doctors as writers in the first half of the XXth century]. / Quelques écrivains-médecins français de la première moitié de XXème siècle Romanciers, essayistes, critiques d'art et littéraires, philosophes de 1900 à 1950.

The author recollects the memory of more than 50 French medical authors of this period. Some of tham are cited in the dictionary le Petit Robert. Many were novelists or literary critics. Among the cited authors numerous were known for their scientific work but Clemenceau is chiefly known for his political career and Schweitzer for his humanitarian action. The author underlines that the suffering and pains of soldiers during the First World War inspired real major works and some medical students became prominent writers.

[Luke, evangelist and physician]. / Le médecin saint Luc l'évangéliste.

Luke, author of the Third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles was also a physician. As he was born in Antioch he was probably Greek. He travelled with the Apostle Paul. He was born in Antioch he as probably Greek. He travelled with the Aspostle Paul. He was the only gospel writer to have been accurate in his medical analysis, for example to locate a paralysis with precision and use Hippocratic tradition terms. He might have been chosen as the patron saint by the medical corporation at the end of the Middle Ages. From the fifteenth century, the University doctors' first day had been the eighteenth of October, that is St Luke's Day. On their seals, several French medical colleges had an invocation to Saint Luke (with a winged bull at his feet as a symbol) and to the Virgin Mary. Medical corporations and painters' guilds had chapels dedicated to Luke at the end of the fourteenth century. In the sixteenth century, Painting Academies were to be called "Saint Luke's" Apart from being famous as a doctor, Luke is known as Virgin Mary's painter. In his gospel he was speaking about her in detail and with tenderness. In Syria and in Rome some paintings were attributed to him. In some fifteenth century engravings, Luke was depicted as a writer of the Gospel or a painter, and sometimes he was dressed as a physician. Nowadays some medical centres are named after him and some French doctors celebrate the eighteenth of October.

[Progress in surgery of limb's wounds during the Great War]. / L'evolution de la chirurgie des plaies de guerre des membres en 1914-1918.

The prominent tenets of limb's wound surgery have been improved during the Great War. Before 1914, traditional treatment of war injuries was usually applied on the ground because injuries caused by firearms were supposedly trivial while the threatening infection refrained surgeons from acting. From the very start of 1914, gangrene and septicaemia were the terrible consequences of new types of injuries provoked by shrapnel, all the more dangerous that the wounded men were numerous and the injuries were nursed after a too important delay. New surgical facilities have been organised by the French Military Health Service which created the "Ambulances Chirurgicales Automobiles", improved the selection procedures and the mobilization of many surgeons. New surgical treatments such as lancing, continuous use irrigation, delayed suture of wounds allowed improvement of results and saved more than one soldier. Finally, the excision of dead and contaminated tissues is still nowadays the most important progress in war surgery.

[Victor Moreau and his son practised the first joint résections]. / Les docteurs Moreau de Bar-le-Duc Victor Moreau (1746-1799) Pierre-Félix Moreau (1778-1846) Les premières résections ostéo-articulaires.

Victor Moreau (1746-1799) and his son (1778-1846) were surgeons in Bar-le-Duc (French Department of Meuse). Victor Moreau invented the first joint resection technique in 1782 and submitted written comments to the "Académie Royale de Chirurgie" in 1782 then 1786 and 1789. At that time amputation was the only way of saving wounded and injured patients' lives and a conservative technique was an actual revolution in bone and joint surgery. His friend Pierre-François Percy was transmitted the technique in 1792. His son improved the technique and attempted to put it into widespread use through his thesis (1803) and the most famous essay of his in 1816. However the technique did not immediately succeed till Leopold Ollier's works proved the "bone regeneration by the periosteum" and the role of the "sub-capsular periosteum resection". Nowadays in spite of prosthesis progress some joint résections can be still indicated. At last Victor Moreau can be deemed the pioneer of the functional limb surgery.