Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey was born at Baudean on July 8, 1766 and later studied medicine at Toulouse.
In 1787, he was a surgeon-major during an expedition to North America where only one man died during the voyage.
He became a professor at a school of military medicine and served in Napoleon's Italian and Egyptian campaigns.
He continued to impress, and was named Inspector General of the Office of Health of the Army in 1805. He also served as the
Chief Surgeon of the Guard in all of Napoleon's military campaigns from 1805 onward, including the Battle of Eylau, the Battle of Wagram (were he became a baron),
and the Russian Campaign. He was at Waterloo, where he was taken prisoner after being wounded. During the Restoration, he became Chief Surgeon
of the Royal Guard, and died in Paris on August 1, 1942.
Larrey is considered to be the first person to utilize ambulances during military battle. In 1792, he introduced a system of "mobile field hospitals,
using light carts drawn by horses to move the wounded from the battlefield, which provided the surgeons with the means of following the armies
in order to avoid delays in treating the wounded" (Connolly et al. 1985) (see Bibliography).
Larrey was known for his attempts to ameliorate the suffering of wounded soldiers, and his work in and
observations of the effects of extremely cold weather on the injured was noteworthy. This research on
cold weather resulted in four volumes of scholary work on mitilitary medicine, entitled Memoires de chirurgie militarie et campagnes (1812-1817).
Napoleon greatly admired Larrey, nicknamed him "Le vertueux Larrey", and bequethed Larrey 100,000 francs.
Submitted for LIS 385T by Kathy Scott, October 1996
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