Dominique-Jean Larrey, Baron Larrey and of the Empire, is a French military doctor and surgeon, father of emergency medicine, born July 8, 1766 in Beaudéan in the province of Gascony of the Ancien Régime, currently in the Hautes-Pyrénées and died in Lyon on July 25, 1842. Chief surgeon of the Grande Armée, Dominique Larrey followed Napoleon I in all his campaigns. He was a pioneer in helping the wounded on the battlefields, providing care in the field as early as possible, using mobile surgical ambulances.
Biography
Origin

Son of Jean Larrey, master shoemaker, he was born in the small village of Beaudéan in the Hautes-Pyrénées. His birthplace still exists on the main street of the village, and it has become a museum1. Orphaned at thirteen, Larrey was raised by his uncle Alexis Larrey, surgeon-major of the La Grave hospital in Toulouse and founder of the first military hospital in this city2. After six years of apprenticeship, he went to Paris to study medicine with Pierre Joseph Desault, chief surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu. On 13 Ventose of the year II3, he married Marie-Élisabeth Laville-Leroux, painter.
Military career

Larrey began his career in 1787 as a royal naval surgeon on the frigate Vigilante in the Irish Sea. Returning to Paris the following year, he became involved with Corvisart and Bichat, and with Sabatier, chief surgeon at the Invalides, a hospital where he obtained a competitive position as assistant major.

The first step in a career that would take him to all the battlefields of Europe, from Spain to Russia, and even to the deserts of Egypt and Syria, in 1792 he was surgeon assistant major at the Army of the Rhine. A first-class surgeon in 1792, in Marshal Luckner's army, he created flying ambulances in Mainz4, at the head of which he ran to remove the wounded under fire from enemy batteries. He was then principal surgeon in Custine's army, then chief surgeon of the 14th Republican Army in 1794. He organized the School of Surgery and Anatomy of Toulon, and became professor at the Military School of Health of Val-de-Grâce in 1796. He was responsible for inspecting the camps and hospitals of the army of Italy (1796), then appointed chief surgeon to the army of Egypt5.

At the battle of Aboukir, he saved General Fugière, under enemy cannon, from a shoulder wound6. At the siege of Alexandria, Larrey found a way to make horse flesh healthy food for the wounded, and had his own horses killed for this purpose. He embalmed Kléber, assassinated in Cairo on June 14, 1800.

In 1802, he was chief surgeon of the Consul Guard. He defended his medical thesis in May 1803, in accordance with the new provisions of the reorganization of the medical world: Dissertation on limb amputations following gunshots dedicated to General de Villemanzy7.

In 1804, Larrey received one of the first officer's crosses of the Legion of Honor from the first consul, who told him: This is a well-deserved reward. Inspector general of the army health service, in 1805, and chief surgeon of the Imperial Guard, he was created Baron of the Empire in 1809, on the field of the battle of Wagram, and inspector general of the military health service in 18108 . He made all the campaigns of the First Empire as chief surgeon of the Imperial Guard9 then as chief surgeon of the Grande Armée (February 12, 1812). In 1813, he was appointed chief surgeon of the Gros-Caillou Military Hospital, located at 106 rue Saint-Dominique, in Paris. He defended conscripts injured in the hand and accused of voluntarily mutilating themselves, which earned him fierce hatred from Soult10. In August 1814, he was appointed inspector general of the army health service and chief surgeon of the hospital of the King's Military Household.
Cenotaph of Larrey at the Père-Lachaise cemetery. As an epitaph, an extract from Napoleon's will: To Larrey, the most virtuous man I have known.

Wounded at the Battle of Waterloo11, prisoner of the Prussians, he was about to be shot because of his resemblance to Napoleon12, but was released on the orders of Blücher, whose son he had treated. The Restoration kept him away but he was recalled by the July Monarchy.

He was part of the first promotion of members of the Royal Academy of Medicine, by order of Louis XVIII in 1820. His majestic and monumental white marble statue, sculpted by Pierre-Alfred Robinet, still sits in the entrance hall of the Academy of Medicine in Paris, rue Bonaparte. In 1829, he was elected a member of the Institute, at the Academy of Sciences.

He belonged to Freemasonry13.

In his last years, member of the Army Health Council, in 1842 he requested a medical inspection in Algeria. He fell ill in Africa and died in Lyon, eight days later, on July 25, 1842. His body, transported to Paris, was buried on August 6 in the Père-Lachaise cemetery (37th division).

Several speeches were given at his grave. Gilbert Breschet, member of the Academy of Sciences, lists his scientific work in surgery, medicine and public hygiene14.

On December 15, 1992, his remains were transferred from his grave in the Père-Lachaise cemetery to the penultimate place available in the Caveau des Gouverneurs in Les Invalides, and a small urn containing a piece of intestine placed in a window in the room from the library of the National Academy of Medicine.
Doctor of the First Empire
Flying ambulance of the Larrey model.
Larrey treating Rebsomen on the battlefield of Hanau15.

He remains the most famous medical figure of the First Empire. At the Battle of the Sierra Negra, he amputated no less than 200 wounded in one day16. He was also considered a good surgeon, at a time when anesthesia did not exist, because he was capable of amputating a limb in less than a minute. Amputation was at the time the only effective asepsis, in the absence of antibiotics, discovered much later.

Larrey would be at the origin of the establishment within the French armies of the system of “flying ambulances” in which he embarked friends and enemies indifferently, in order to treat them without making any distinction of nationality or rank, which earned him the esteem of the officers and generals of the enemy armies17.

Larrey is also known in the field of asticotherapy which he used during the Egyptian campaign in Syria. This technique dating from antiquity consists of placing a certain species of maggot on infected wounds which feeds on infected flesh, thus cleaning it.

On October 1, 1811, with the help of four other doctors, Baron Larrey performed a mastectomy on the English author Frances Burney (wife of General Alexandre d'Arblay). The latter, conscious during the operation, recounts a few months later in a letter addressed to her sister the different actions of the doctors during her mastectomy18.

In 1830 he acquired a property in Bièvres, which he passed on to his son Hippolyte (1808-1895), chief doctor of the army and surgeon to Napoleon III. He left memories of great interest, extremely rare in the first edition and becoming rare in the reissue.
Posterity

Val-de-Grâce had a statue erected in Larrey, the inauguration of which took place in August 1850.

Larrey's name is inscribed on the 30th column of the south pillar of the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile in Paris.

There is a rue Larrey in Paris, in the 5th arrondissement, in Brienne-le-Château (Aube), where he played an active part during the French Campaign in 1814, and in Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrénées, his department of birth) where a statue was also erected in his honor. In Toulouse, two hospitals also bear the name Larrey: the former military hospital, founded by his uncle Alexis Larrey and now demolished, located on the Quai Saint-Pierre, between Capitole and Garonne, and the new Larrey military hospital, inaugurated on the hill of Pech-David in 1984 and named after his son Hippolyte, which is used today by the University Hospital which bought it in 20002.

In Versailles, the Grand Commun housed a military hospital from 1832 which later became a military training hospital for the Dominique Larrey armies and which closed in 199519,20. Some of his descendants keep surgical equipment that belonged to him in a Poitevin family property - not open to the public.
Works
Statue of Larrey in the courtyard of the Val-de-Grâce church.
Statue of Larrey in Tarbes.

    Memoir on the prevailing ophthalmia in Egypt, 17 p. in-4°, Cairo, Imprimerie nationale, 1800.
    Dissertation on amputations of limbs following gunshots, [Paris medical thesis no. 1], 1803, Full text [archive].
    Historical and surgical relationship of the expedition of the Army of the Orient in Egypt and Syria, Paris, Ed. Demonville and sisters, year xi [1802-1803], 12-480 p., in-8° (read online [archive]). — Reprinted in Memoirs and Campaigns, from the same author. : Paris, Ed. Tallandier, 2004 (ISBN 2-84734-124-2).
    Memoirs of military surgery and campaigns, 4 volumes in-8°, J Smith (Paris), 1812–1817.

    first volume, 1812, read online [archive] on Gallica.
    second volume, 1812, read online [archive] on Gallica.
    third volume, 1812, read online [archive] on Gallica.
    fourth volume, 1817, read online [archive] on Gallica.

    Collection of surgical memoirs, 319 p, Paris, by Compère Young publisher, 1821.
    In collaboration with Christophe Hufeland, Treatise on scrophulous disease, 398 p. 1 vol. in-8°, Paris, at Baillière, bookseller, 1821.
    Collection of surgical memoirs, Compère Jeune (Paris), 1821, 1 vol. (XVI-319 p.): pl. in black and color. ; in-8°, read online [archive] on Gallica.
    Considerations on yellow fever, 31 p. in-8°, by Compère Young publisher, 1821. 2nd ed., 42 p., 1822.
    “Memory on a new way of reducing or treating limb fractures, complicated by wounds”, 8 p. in-8°, Paris, extract from the Supplementary Journal of the Dictionary of Medical Sciences, volume XX, 1825.
    Surgery by Mr. Baron Larrey, Paris, M. Dupuy, 1825, 8vo, 12 p.
    clinique surgical exercise carried out particularly in camps and military hospitals from 1792 until 1829, 5 vols. in-8° with atlas, Paris, at Baillière, 1829-1836.
    Memoir on Cholera-morbus, Paris, Imprimerie de Mme Huzard, 1831, 43 p.
    Copy of a Memoir on cholera-morbus, sent to Saint Petersburg in January 1831, for the competition relating to this epidemic disease, Paris: impr. de Demonville, 1831, in-8°, 24 p.
    Memoir on cholera-morbus, Paris: J.-B. Baillière, 1831, 46 p., 8°, read online [archive] on Gallica.
    Speech at the funeral of Mr. Baron Dupuytren, Paris, Imprimerie Firmin-Didot Frères, 1835, 4 p., 4vo
    Notice on the epidemic of Indian cholera morbus, 11 p. in-4°, Paris, Print. by Bachelor, 1835. 20 p. in-8°, Paris, Mme Huzard, 1835.
    Larrey's Original Reports to the Army of the Orient, Cairo, Impr. from the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, 1936, VIII-85 p., in-4°. — Ed. by Paul Pallary.
    Royal Institute of France. Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Funeral of Mr. Broussais. Speech by Mr. Droz and Bon Larrey… November 21, 1938, Paris: impr. by Firmin-Didot, 1938, 4°, 8 p.
    Medical account of campaigns and travels from 1815 to 1840, followed by notices on fractures of the pelvic limbs, on the physical constitution of the Arabs, and surgical statistics of general officers wounded in combat and dressed on the battlefields, Paris, JB Baillière, 1841, 8°, 412 p. Full text [archive].
    Memoirs of military surgery and campaigns. Reissue: Paris, Rémanences, 1983, five volumes. The 5th vol. is: Medical account of campaigns and travels from 1815 to 1840. The last reissue in 2 volumes (total of 1,960 p.), by Tallandier, 2004.
    Note for Mme Ve Le Normant… against Mr. Baron Larrey, Paris, impr. Le Normant, nd, 8 p.
    Remarks on the physical constitution of the Arabs, who can be considered as the primitive race of the human species or as its prototype, Paris, impr. by Bachelier, sd, in-8°, 15 p.
    Memoir on the extirpation of the salivary glands (the parotid and the submandibular), necessitated by the scrofulous and squirrous engorgement of these glands, by Bon Larrey, read in the sessions of July 26. and August 9, 1841, Paris, print. by Firmin-Didot, nd, in-4°, 23 p.

Bibliography

    Doctor Michel Lévy, Funeral eulogy, speech delivered at the tomb of Baron Larrey in the name of the professors of Val-de-Grâce, 8 p., in-8°, Paris, Impr. by P. Renouard, 1842.
    Reveille-Parise, Medical Gallery, Paris: impr. by F. Malteste, 1843, 8vo, 14 p.
    Doctor Étienne Pariset, Eulogy, read at the annual session of the Royal Academy of Medicine, November 25, 1845. 38 p., 8°, Paris, J.-B. Baillière, 1845.
    Louis de Loménie, Gallery of illustrious contemporaries. Larrey, by a man of nothing, Paris: impr. by de Soye, 1852, in-18, 36 p.
    Dr Leroy-Dupré, Larrey (Jean-Dominique), Paris: impr. by H. Plon, 1859, in-4°, 7 p. Extract from the “Universal Bibliography” t. XXIII.
    Hippolyte Leroy-Dupré, Larrey, Chief Surgeon of the Grande Armée, Albessard, 1860.
    Joachim Ambert, Baron Larrey, by General Joachim Ambert, Paris: impr. de Cosse and J. Dumaine, 1863, in-18, 66 p.
    Paul Triaire, Napoléon and Larrey, Mame, Tours, 1902.
    Eugène Dupeyroux, Baron Dominique Larrey, his life, his work, in-8°, Paris, 1904.
    Charles Framée, Dominique Larrey Chief Surgeon of the Grande Armée, 16 p., Les Contemporains no 969, 1911.
    General Baron Ambert, Three Men of Heart. Larrey - Daumesnil - Desaix, 142 p., Alfred Mame et Fils, 1927.
    Dr Paul Busquet, Jean-Dominique Larrey, July 8, 1766 - July 25, 1842, 2 vols. gr. in-8°, Paris, Baillière, 1929.
    Henri Drouin, Life of Baron Larrey, Chief Surgeon of the Grande Armée, 59 p., Paris, Les Laboratoires Martinet, 1930.
    Jean-Edmond Juillard, Thesis... Dominique Larrey, war surgeon, Paris: L. Arnette , 1946, 8vo, 76 p.
    Pierre Taillandier, Thesis... Dominique-Jean Larrey, surgeon to the French armies, Paris: AGEMP, 1960, 204 p.
    André Soubiran, Baron Larrey, Surgeon to Napoleon, Fayard, 1966.
    (in) RG Richardson, “Larrey - What Manner of Man? », Proc R Soc Med. 1977;70(7):490-4, Full text [archive].
    Central Directorate of the Army Health Service (DCSSA), Dominique-Jean Larrey, chief surgeon of the Grande Armée: 150 years after his death, the tribute of the Invalid