Background
Antoine Portal was born on January 5, 1742, in Gaillac, France. Portal was the eldest son of Antoine Portal, an apothecary, and Marianne Journes.
University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France
Portal went to Montpellier, where he studied medicine from 1762 to 1765.
Baron Antoine Portal
https://www.amazon.com/lAcad%C3%A9mie-Sciences-m%C3%A9phitiques-principalement-efficace/dp/B07TS2D2HY/?tag=2022091-20
anatomist historian physician scientist
Antoine Portal was born on January 5, 1742, in Gaillac, France. Portal was the eldest son of Antoine Portal, an apothecary, and Marianne Journes.
After attending the Jesuit college in Albi, Portal went to Montpellier, where he studied medicine from 1762 to 1765.
After studying medicine from 1762 to 1765 at the University of Montpellier, Portal then, with letters of recommendation to Senac, Lieutaud, and Bufifon, traveled to Paris, where he remained until his death.
In 1766 Portal was appointed anatomy teacher to the twelve-year-old dauphin (the future Louis XVIII). In Paris, as in Montpellier, he organized private courses in anatomy for students who were dissatisfied with the antiquated instruction given at the Faculte de Medecine. He also established a medical practice and rapidly built up a large clientele. Because of his knowledge of anatomy and medicine Portal was one of the most respected physicians in Paris, especially for the diagnosis, through physical examination, of abdominal disorders; to win such repute, however, he employed methods bordering on charlatanism.
Portal was elected an adjunct member of the Academie des Sciences in 1769, an associate member in 1774, and a pensioner in 1784. He served as professor of anatomy at the College de France from 1769; and in 1778, with Buffon’s support, he was assigned the chair of anatomy at the Jardin du Roi that Vicq d’Azyr had hoped to win. Portal's lectures, which were very popular at both institutions, were supplemented by experiments in physiology and experimental pathology. No important anatomical discovery, however, can be attributed to Portal; and on certain points, he was even unaware of contemporary knowledge: he mistakenly viewed the urachus as the suspensory ligament of the bladder rather than the remains of an embryonal canal, and he believed that anencephaly was caused by difficult childbirth.
The French Revolution had little effect on Portal’s career; he continued to treat a distinguished clientele and to teach at the College de France and the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle (formerly the Jardin du Roi). He was named to the Institut de France when that body was created in 1795 in place of the old academies.
Portal’s works appeared between 1764 and 1827 when he published Observations sur la nature et le traitement de Vepilepsie at the age of eighty-five.
Although he demonstrated, even in his earliest works, an interest in pathological anatomy, Portal is known chiefly for his Histoire de VanUtomie et de la chirurgie, in which he recounted (in the form of a bio-bibliographical dictionary) the evolution of anatomy and its surgical applications front “the Flood and the Trojan War” to 1755. Although the notices on contemporary authors led to several polemics, the work is still a valuable reference. Portal also published new editions of his patrons’ works: for Lieutaud, Historia anatomica medica (1767) and Anatomie historique et pratique (1776), and for Senac, Traite de la structure du coeur (1774).
Portal published several Instructions, commissioned by the government and addressed to physicians and the public concerning problems of public health (including asphyxiation in “mephitic vapors” and measures of first aid for the drowning and for persons bitten by rabid animals). In an Instruction published in 1775, he advocated the method of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Portal’s Observations sur la nature et sur le traitement de la phthisie pulmonaire (1792), which was translated into Italian (1801) and German (1802), was a synthesis of currently accepted knowledge, in which he affirmed the noncontagiousness of phthisis. In his work on liver ailments Portal cited the hepatic congestion that accompanies deficient cardiac action, the cardiac cirrhosis that can result from it, and the types of hepatitis induced by overexertion.
In 1818, an old man still attired in the style of the Ancien Regime, he was named the first physician to the king, Louis XVIII, an honor of which he had dreamed all his life. He retained this office under Charles X, who named him a baron. In 1820, after repeated requests from Portal, the Academie Royal de Medecine was created, and Portal was named its permanent honorary president.
(Volume 1)
1776(Part 2)
1768(Part 1)
1768Portal was elected an adjunct member of the Academie des Sciences in 1769, an associate member in 1774. He was also a member of the Académie Nationale de Society Française Médecine Légale.
Antoine Portal always sparkled in society with the amount and taste of anecdotes he liked to relate. He notably told how, under the Directory, he used to be in business with men who illegally delivered him corpses to his own house. There, the doctor would carry out postmortem examinations on his own bed and if, by any chance, the police interpellated him, he would get rid of the bodies through a trap door leading to the neighboring street. Portal was considered by his students and his entourage as a worthy doctor who was unequivocally as gifted as Corvisart.
Quotes from others about the person
Dupont (1999) said of him: "He lived through all the regimes without too much trouble, swearing allegiance to five kings, to a republic and to an emperor."
In 1774 Portal married Anne Barafort; they had two daughters.