Antoine Louis

Antoine Louis (ɑ̃twan lwi; 13 February 1723, Metz – 20 May 1792) was an 18th-century French surgeon and physiologist. He was originally trained in medicine by his father, a sergeant major at a local military hospital. As a young man he moved to Paris, where he served as gagnant-maîtrise at the Salpêtrière. In 1750 he was appointed professor of physiology, a position he held for 40 years. In 1764 he was appointed lifetime secretary to the Académie Royale de Chirurgie. Louis published numerous articles on surgery, including several biographies of surgeons who died in his lifetime. He also published the surgical aphorisms of Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738). Louis is credited with designing a prototype of the guillotine. For a period of time after its invention, the guillotine was called a louisette. However, it was later named after French physician Joseph Ignace Guillotin (1738–1814), whose advocacy of a more humane method of capital punishment prompted the guillotine's design. The "angle of Louis" is another name for the sternal angle, which is the point of junction between the manubrium and the body of the sternum. Réfutation de l'écrit des médecins, intitulé la subordination des chirurgiens aux médecins, démontrée par la nature des deux professions, & par le bien public, 1748, 32 p. Texte intégral. Addition à l'examen des plaintes des médecins de province, présentées au roy par la Faculté de Médecine de Paris, 1749, 11 p. Texte intégral. Éloge de M. Petit. Prononcé à la séance publique de l'Académie royale de chirurgie. Le mardi 26 mai 1750, 1750, 2 p. Lettres sur la certitude des signes de la mort : où l'on rassure les citoyens de la crainte d'être enterrés vivans : avec des observations [et] des expériences sur les noyés, Michel Lambert (Paris), 1752, 376 p. Texte intégral. Lettre sur les maladies vénériennes, dans laquelle on publié la manière de préparer le mercure dont la plus forte dose n'excite point de salivation, Michel Lambert (Paris), 1754, 12 p. Texte intégral.