Fournier

Fournier Alfred (Jean Alfred Fournier, 1832-1914), one of the world's leading syphilologists, professor of the clinic of skin and venereal diseases at the University of Paris. F. received his doctor of medicine degree in 1860, and from 1863 he was associated with the medical faculty. In 1868-1876, he worked at the Hopital de Lourcine, where he first conducted a private and subsequently an official course on the clinical aspects of syphilis. In 1880, F. transferred his teaching activities to the largest hospital in Paris, Hopital Saint Louis, while simultaneously becoming professor of the university clinic for skin and venereal diseases. To F. belongs a whole series of works in the field of dermatovenereology, but world fame came to him through his works in the field of diagnosis, therapy, and prevention of syphilis. The attention of the medical world was drawn to F. by his first works on syphilis—his doctoral dissertation (1860) on syphilitic infection, research on the contagiousness of the hard chancre, on the incubation period of syphilis, on extragenital chancres (1897), and later (1898) classical works on the clinical aspects and therapy of syphilis, in particular works on hereditary syphilis and parasyphilitic diseases. F. is the creator of the so-called 'chronically intermittent' method of syphilis treatment, a method that forms the basis of modern therapy for this disease (see Syphilis, treatment). To F. also belongs a whole series of scientific and popular articles dedicated to popularizing information about syphilis, its social significance, impact on the family, the need for a broad fight against it and prevention, and the role of prostitution in the spread of syphilis. F. is the founder of the French Dermatological Society and the French Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis (Société française de dermatologie et Société française de prophylaxie sanitaire et morale). F.'s major works were repeatedly translated into other languages, including Russian.