Antoine Louis

Antoine Louis
File:Antoine Louis.jpg Professor Antoine Louis in 1778
Born	(1723-02-13)13 February 1723 Metz
Died	Paris
Nationality	French
Occupation	surgeon and physiologist
Known for	inventing the guillotine or louisette
Children	none

Antoine Louis (13 February 1723 – 20 May 1792) was a French surgeon and physiologist who was born in Metz.

Memoire contre la legitimite des naissances pretendues tardives, 1764

He was originally trained in medicine by his father, a surgeon-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 Hermann 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), who advocated a more humane method of capital punishment.

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.

References

• Antoine Louis @ Who Named It