Ricord

RICORD Philippe (Philippe Ricord, 1800-1889), founder of modern scientific venereology. Son of a French émigré, he received thorough general and medical education in England and France and from the day of his entry in 1831 into the Paris hospital .Midi widely and systematically applied experimental methods for the study of venereal diseases. On the basis of a huge number (up to 1,500) of inoculations on the skin of secretions from gonorrhea and syphilitic products, R. proved that gonorrhea with its completely diverse symptomatology is a separate disease, standing in no connection with syphilis. The success of the clinical study of venereal diseases was greatly facilitated by the fact that R. was the first to introduce into practice the venereal hospital's vaginal speculum ("De l'emploi du speculum", P., 1833). Adhering to the principle that "inoculation from the sick to the healthy should always be rejected by the doctor" and therefore experimenting only on patients, R. established (using his formulation) that: "1) acquired syphilis always begins with a chancre; 2) a hard chancre comes only from a hard chancre; 3) secondary symptoms are accompanied only by 'infecting' (the entire body) hardened chancres; 4) a person who has once had a hard chancre will not get it a second time; syphilis does not recur; 5) all manifestations of syphilis are subject to a precise chronological law and in this respect are divided into primary, secondary, and tertiary; 6) syphilis is susceptible only to specific means-mercury and iodine-which have no therapeutic effect on other venereal diseases". The very methodology of R.-producing inoculations on the patient-was also the cause of R.'s main scientific error: his belief in the non-infectiousness of secondary products of syphilis, an error which he recognized only in 1852. With these discoveries, R. paved the way for his students and followers, who established the existence of syphilitic, soft, and mixed chancres and excellently developed the clinic of syphilis in all its manifestations.

Along with this, R. also developed an extensive program for the prevention and control of syphilis, which can be summarized as follows: "1) isolation of patients with contagious forms in well-equipped hospitals; 2) careful treatment with all available means of 'sources' of syphilis; 3) careful examination of prostitutes with mandatory use of the vaginal speculum; these examinations give practical results only if they are carried out 2 times a week; 4) examination should also extend to men; in particular this is feasible in the army; 5) informing patients about the dangers of venereal diseases to them personally and about the possibility of transmitting the disease to others; 6) frightening with the disease helps little; it only leads to frightening those already sick and gives rise to the development of syphilophobia, one of the forms of psychosis; 7) improvement of working conditions for women and increase in their wages; 8) there is no absolutely reliable means of protection against syphilis; 9) it is necessary to care for maintaining cleanliness-washing, douching; if women in general were more clean, more cared for themselves, then venereal diseases would be less prevalent". R. considered it necessary to post these rules everywhere where people might be exposed to danger. Thus. R. is undoubtedly the founder not only of the French school of venereology, from which came such major scientists as Basset, Fournier, Rollet, etc., but of all world venereology-syphilology. His election as honorary chairman of the First World Dermato-Syphilology Congress in Paris in 1889 shortly before his death was an act of recognition of his world scientific merits. A Paris venereological hospital is named after R., and a prize in his name is awarded by the Paris Medical Academy to the author of the best work on syphilis. His main works: "Traite pratique des maladies veneriennes" (Paris, 1838); "Lettres sur la syphilis" (P., 1851; 3rd ed., P., 1863).