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Pierre-Fidèle Bretonneau
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Pierre-Fidèle Bretonneau

French physician
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Article History
Quick Facts
Born:
April 3, 1778, Tours, Fr.
Died:
Feb. 18, 1862, Passy (aged 83)

Pierre-Fidèle Bretonneau (born April 3, 1778, Tours, Fr.—died Feb. 18, 1862, Passy) was a French epidemiologist who in 1825 performed the first successful tracheotomy (incision of and entrance into the trachea through the skin and muscles of the neck).

He received his M.D. degree in Paris in 1815 and became chief physician of the hospital at Tours the following year. Bretonneau made the clinical distinction of diphtheria, to which he gave its name. He also distinguished between typhoid and typhus. In his doctrine of specific causes of infectious diseases, he foreshadowed the germ theory of Pasteur.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.