Jean-Baptiste-Édouard Gélineau, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetJean-Baptiste-Édouard Gélineau
French physician
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Blaye, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France
About Jean-Baptiste-Édouard Gélineau
- Jean-Baptiste-Édouard Gélineau (23 December 1828 – 2 March 1906) was the French physician who first described narcolepsy. Gélineau was born in Blaye, Gironde, and had a varied life.
- As a young student at the Rochefort Navy Medical School he took part in the combat against cholera, from which the city of La Rochelle was suffering.
- In 1849 he became an intern of the Navy Hospital and in the following year a "Surgeon of the Third Class". As a naval surgeon he visited French colonies in the Indian Ocean: first Réunion island and then Mayotte in the Comoros archipelago.
- During this period he wrote Voyage a i'lle de la Réunion, a memoir published much later, in 1905, in which he described colonial life and the abolition of slavery.
- He included the story of Elise, a beautiful Creole woman.
- She was the concubine of a young naval commander, and had a child who died soon after birth.
- This indicates the autobiographic character of the work. He defended a doctoral thesis "Aperçu Medical de I'lle de Mayotte" at Montpellier University School of Medicine in 1858, using the data collected during his year-and-a-half stay on Mayotte.
- At that time he was a "Navy Surgeon of the Second Class". For his dedication in fighting epidemics that broke out during the Franco-German war in 1870, he was nominated for the Legion of Honor, but received it later on.
- He also held the Officier d'Academie and Commander of Nichan of the Ottoman Empire. In 1871, Gélineau introduced "Doctor Gélineau's Tablets" for the treatment of epilepsy (they contained bromide and arsenic).
- He was a member of the Société de Médicine, Société d' Hypnologie, La Société Française d' Hygiène, and a few others. After retirement at the age of 72, Gélineau switched to wine production, continuing the family tradition.
- He was awarded gold medals at exhibitions in Antwerp and Paris.
- He died, aged 77, in Argelès-Gazost, Pyrenees.
Read more at Wikipedia
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