Ethics and experimentation on human subjects in mid-nineteenth-century France: the story of the 1859 syphilis experiments
Dracobly, A.; Gibert, C.; Auzias-Turenne, J.Alexandre.; Ricord, P.
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77(2): 332-366
2003
ISSN/ISBN: 0007-5140 PMID: 12955963 Document Number: 557251
This article examines a series of experiments involving the deliberate infection of human subjects with syphilis that were performed in Paris in 1859 by Dr. Camille Gibert and Dr. Joseph Alexandre Auzias-Turenne. Using the scientific literature on syphilis, the contemporary reaction in the French medical press to Gibert's and Auzias-Turenne's experiments, and the private papers of Auzias-Turenne, this paper places these experiments within a context of scientific and professional rivalry, and seeks to show how both moral and scientific concerns shaped and limited experimental practices in mid-nineteenth-century France.