Victor-Joseph François

Victor-Joseph François (January 28, 1790 – February 1868) was a Belgian medical doctor and professor at the Catholic University of Louvain (1834–1968).

Biography Originally from northern France, Victor François studied medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, where he worked as an assistant to Thénard and accompanied botanist Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu on herbarium excursions.

In late 1813, a few months after obtaining his medical degree, he began his career as a physician at the military prison in Mons, then part of the French department of Jemmapes, where the wounded from the Napoleonic Wars were brought. The following year, he faced an epidemic of exanthematic typhus.

From 1838 until his death in 1868 at the age of 78, he taught at the University of Louvain, where he held the chair of internal pathology and forensic medicine, and served as dean of the Faculty of Medicine.

Selected publications Essai sur les gangrènes spontanées, Mons, 1832 (awarded in 1830 by the Royal Society of Medicine of Bordeaux) "Note on the immunity of coal miners to pulmonary phthisis," in: Bulletin of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, vol. XVI, 1st series, p. 555 & seq. "Note on the anemia of coal miners," in: Bulletin of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, vol. IV, 2nd series, no. 6