Velpeau

Velpeau is the name of a district (Fr. quartier) in Tours and named after a 19th century doctor who trained here. He is one of a group of doctors, all contemporaries, who began their working lives in Tours and made their names here. Dr Velpeau has a type of heavy compression bandage used for burns and other mishaps named after him. He was known as an absolute stickler for best practice, a ceaseless worker who had come from very humble beginnings.

His last words were supposedly 'You must not be lazy, always work'. He was born in 1775 in a village near Tours, where his father was the farrier. This allowed him to gain some idea of veterinary practice. Because of the interest he showed in medicine, it seems a philanthropic neighbour sent him to be trained in the hospital in Tours in 1816. It was there he met Pierre-Fidèle Bretonneau, the head doctor at the hospital, and they remained associated until Bretonneau's death in 1862. 

In fact, it is really Bretonneau who introduced the compression bandage. He drew on the work of an earlier Prussian surgeon and advocated the use of such bandages, especially for burns. Velpeau in turn made the bandages better known, widened their usage and as a result this type of compression bandage now bears his name.

In 1820 Velpeau left Tours to graduate in Paris. We know a lot about what he got up to because of his extensive surviving correspondence with Bretonneau. With Armand Trousseau, another of Bretonneau's brilliant students, Velpeau was at the centre of a remarkable Tourangelle medical network who all published their research in leading medical journals. They became celebrities, being referenced by Balzac (also a native of the Touraine).

Velpeau was a researcher, practicing surgeon taking both private and public hospital patients, hospital administrator and medical training lecturer. He was the Chair of Clinical Surgery at la Charité Hospital in Paris for thirty years. He was interested in a wide variety of medical conditions, especially diphtheria, typhoid and other fevers, quinine, and compression. 

He was described as the clinical doctor who had the biggest following and was the best liked, open to new and progressive ideas but hostile to dangerous eccentricities. His strong character and unwillingness to accept poor unscientific practice did make him enemies early on in his career though. 

Sadly, although Tours has hospitals named after his colleagues Bretonneau and Trousseau, there is none memorialising Velpeau.

Further reading: An article in Gallica, the Bibliothèque Nationale (National library) newsletter (in French) https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/fr/html/velpeau-linfatigable-chirurgien