Émile Vallin

Émile Arthur Vallin (27 November 1833 in Nantes – 27 February 1924 in Montpellier) was a French military physician, considered to be a precursor of public health in France a convinced Pasteurian.

Biography Son of François-Auguste Vallin, a doctor in Nantes and Fanny Robertson-Martel, whom he divorced to marry Louise Marie Bidermann on 2 April 1882.

After secondary school, he was a prize-winning intern at the Nantes hospitals in the 1853 competition, then a prosector at the Nantes Secondary School of Medicine in 1855. On 8 February 1858, he passed his medical thesis at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris and in December of the same year, he was appointed trainee doctor at the Imperial School of Military Medicine and Pharmacy.

From 5 August 1860 to 16 June 1861, he took part in the Syrian Expeditionary Force. On his return, he was appointed to the Military Hospital in Strasbourg. In 1865, he passed the agrégation examination, which led him to the post of professor of epidemiology at the Val-de-Grâce Army Training Hospital. He took part in the Franco-Prussian War in the ambulance of the 17th corps headquarters as chief doctor on 2 November 1870.

Promoted to the rank of Major 1st class doctor on 8 February 1871, he was transferred to the army of Versailles, to the 46th line regiment in April, he was appointed Medical Inspector at the health service of the military government in Lyon and at the 14th corps (16 June 1888).

From 1888 to 1893, he was director of the new Lyon Military Medical School (28 December 1888).

On 22 April 1893, he was appointed Director of the Paris military government's health service and he ended his career.

In 1869, Émile Vallin took part in the 5th edition of Michel Lévy's Traité d'Hygiène publique et privée (Treatise on Public and Private Hygiene) with a work on the Hygiene of the Military Profession (Hygiène de la profession militaire). He revised the translation of Griesinger's Infectionskrankheiten ("Infectious diseases") (1877).

In 1879, he founded the Revue d'hygiène et de police sanitaire ("Hygiene and sanitary police review") and he then wrote numerous articles in this journal, all devoted to the most important questions of public, professional or private hygiene, military hygiene, the etiology and prophylaxis of preventable diseases, the sanitation of urban environments, collective and private homes, food hygiene, etc. He also wrote the Traité des désinfectants et de la désinfection (Treatise on Disinfectants and Disinfection) published in 1882.

At the Academy of Medicine, he was interested in alcoholisation, the dangers of mobile stoves, the pathogenesis of heat stroke, disinfection in contagious diseases, alcoholism through breast-feeding, typhoid fever in Paris, stinging caterpillars and the sickness in the basins of silkworm farms and the prophylaxis of tuberculosis. In 1877, with Alexandre Lacassagne and Apollinaire Bouchardat, he was a founding member of the Société de Médecine publique et d'Hygiène professionnelle (Society of Public Medicine and Professional Hygiene). He was also a member of the Medical Society of Hospitals.

As early as 1884, he recommended that:

He became Paul Brouardel's right-hand man on the Advisory Committee on Public Hygiene which depended on the authority of the Minister of the Interior and in 1889, Pasteur, Brouardel and Vallin, during the Exposition Universelle, invited the members of the departmental hygiene councils to take part in a congress devoted to prophylaxis.

Publications De l'inflammation périombilicale dans la tuberculisation du péritoine, A. Parent imprimeur, 1869 De la salubrité de la profession militaire, Baillière, Paris, 1869 Recherches expérimentales sur l'insolation et les accidents produits par la chaleur, P. Asselin, 1870 De la forme ambulatoire ou apyrétique grave de la fièvre typhoïde, P. Asselin, Paris, 1873 De l'emploi du bromure de potassium comme adjuvant dans le traitement des fièvres intermittentes, A. Hennuyer, Paris, 1873 Du mouvement de la population Européenne en Algérie, impr. de E. Martinet, 1876 Traité des maladies infectieuses (Griesinger Wilhelm), J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1877 Traité des désinfectants et de la désinfection, G. Masson, 1882 Rapport sur l'enquête concernant la contagion de la phtisie, 1886 L'emploi de l'acide salicylique et de ses dérivés dans les substances alimentaires, Masson, Paris, 1887

Sur la prophylaxie du paludisme en Corse, avec Laveran Alphonse, 1901 Conférences sur l'alcoolisme avec Petit Arthur-Léon, Société d'éditions scientifiques, 1901

Distinctions Legion of Honour Commander of the Legion of Honour (26 December 1894). Officier d'Académie Officer of the Ordre des Palmes académiques (7 June 1876). Order of the Medjidie Officer of the Order of the Medjidie (9 October 1886). Montyon Prize (1854)

Legacy A street is named after him in Nantes facing the street Capitaine Yves Hervouët.