Edmond Nocard

Edmond Nocard (1850-1903) was a Veterinary surgeon and microbiologist French, born with Provins (Seine-et-Marne) in 1850 and deceased with Saint-Maurice (the Marne) the August 2nd 1903.

He studied the veterinary medicine with the École Veterinary surgeon of Houses-Alfort of 1868 with 1871 then, after his military service, of 1871 with 1873. From 1873 with 1878 it directed the Clinical Service of this school, working with Dumesnil. In 1876 it was charged to create a new review, the Files Veterinary surgeons , where it will publish a great number of scientific articles concerning medicine, the surgery, hygiene and jurisprudence. In 1878 it was accepted in a public contest as professor of clinical and surgical veterinary medicine at the School Veterinary surgeon. Among his former students of which much became famous one finds Camille Guerin, the Co-discoverer of the Bacille of Calmette and Guerin (BCG).

In 1880 it entered as assistant to the laboratory of Pasteur to Paris. It helped there Pasteur and Roux in their experiments of vaccination of animals against the coal in Pouilly-le-Fort. In 1883, it went in Egypt with Roux, Straus and Thuillier, to study there an epidemic of Choléra, without managing to insulate the germ responsible for the disease. It returned the same year to Houses-Alfort where it created a research laboratory well equipped, in close connection with Pasteur. During the three years which followed, it gave the proof of its great competence of the work of laboratory in the new science which was the Bactériologie, by developing a certain number of novel methods, like methods to separate the Sérum from the Sang, new culture media for the bacillus of tuberculosis, the introduction of the Anesthésie for the large animals by means of the chloral hydrate by intravenous way, and also of the techniques allowing to fight against the Tétanos.

Its scientific and theoretical achievements were rewarded, in 1887, by the title of principal and pulpit of the infectious illness; in 1888, one invited it to become member of the first editorial board of the Annales of the Institute Pasteur . In 1895 he became full member of the Institut Pasteur. To 1892 with 1896, by a series of communications, conferences, booklets and demonstrations, it endeavoured to convince the doctors and the general public that the use of the tuberculin of Robert Koch could be used as a basis for the prevention of the bovine Tuberculose. It published Bovine Tuberculosis: its Dangers, its Relationship with the human tuberculosis traditional .

The principal contribution of Nocard to medicine was the discovery of the species of bacteria which was called in its Nocardia honor. It causes nocardiosis, disease which appears especially in animals economically important, as at the bovines in the form of the farcin, for which he discovered the first variety of Nocardia, called by him at the beginning Streptothrix farcinica . Nocardia can also cause diseases at the human ones, particularly at the immunodéprimés patients, like the sidéens.

In the veterinary field of pathology he discovered the disease-causing agent responsible for the enzootic mammite, Streptococcus agalactiae . He discovered also the microbe which causes the bovine péripneumonie and he studied the Psittacose.

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