Career
His contributions to medicine include Trousseau sign of malignancy, Trousseau sign of latent tetany, Trousseau-Lallemand bodies (an archaic synonym for Bence Jones cylinders), and the truism, "use new drugs quickly, while they still work."
A native of Tours, Indre-et-Loire, Armand Trousseau began his medical studies in his native town as a pupil of Pierre Fidele Bretonneau at the local general hospital. He later continued his studies in Paris, where he received his doctorate in 1825 and became adjunct faculty in 1827. In 1828, the French government assigned him to investigate epidemics ravaging some parts of southern France.
This work, and a monograph on laryngeal phthisis, led to his early recognition in Paris.
In 1830 Trousseau became Médecin des hôpitaux through concours, and in 1832 received a position in public health with the central bureau while working as a physician in the Hôtel-Dieu under Joseph Claude Anthelme Récamier. In 1839 he was appointed physician at the Hôpital Saint Antoine and eventually became Chair of therapy and pharmacology at the Paris medical faculty.
In 1850 he assumed the Chair of clinical medicine and again commenced working in the Hôtel-Dieu. During his later years Trousseau developed pancreatic cancer.
Coincidentally, he previously described Trousseau sign of malignancy and developed a similar finding in himself.
This cancer limited his activities and eventually proved fatal. Trousseau was instrumental in creating new modes of treatment of croup, emphysema, pleurisy, goiter, and malaria. He was the first in France to perform a tracheotomy, and he wrote a monograph on this as well as intubation in 1851.
His textbooks on clinical medicine and therapeutics were both extremely popular and translated into English.
Trousseau coined the terms aphasia and forme fruste and popularized eponyms in disease description such as Addison"s disease and Hodgkin"s lymphoma. In 1833, Trousseau invented the Trousseau Tracheal Dilator, a blunt-nosed forcep designed to allow easier access to a tracheostomy stoma.
Trousseau was considered an outstanding teacher.