Rene Leriche

Born Oct. 12, 1879, in Roanne; died Dec. 28, 1955, in Cassis. French surgeon and physiologist. Member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1945), the French Medical Academy, and the French Academy of Surgery (1946).

Leriche received his medical education in Lyon (1906). In 1937 he became head of the department of experimental medicine at the Collège de France in Paris and at Lyon. Leriche was one of the founders of a new physiological school in surgery: he considered disease not the distortion of normal functional relationships in the body but, instead, the appearance of new relationships. He studied the possibility of influencing pathological processes by means of surgery. His principal works dealt with injury sequelae manifested by a pain syndrome and with physiological mechanisms in morbid processes in a variety of tissues. He developed a blockade methodology and elaborated surgical interventions for the sympathetic nervous system. He was awarded the Lister Medal in 1939 for his work on the treatment of infected wounds. His book The Philosophy of Surgery (1951) is widely known. Leriche was an honorary doctor of 30 foreign universities and an honorary member of a number of foreign academies and societies, including the All-Union Society of Surgeons of the USSR (1955).