Background
Davaine was born on March 19, 1812, in St.-Amand-les-Eaux, France, the sixth child of Benjamin-Joseph Davaine, distiller, and of Catherine Vanautrève.
Rue des Augustins 30, 7500 Tournai, Belgium
Davaine began his studies at the parochial collège at St. Amand-les Eaus, entered the collège of Tournai (now in Belgium) in 1828, and finished his studies at Lille. At the end of 1830 Davaine started his medical courses in Paris, and in 1834 he competed for a hospital externship.
Rue des Augustins 30, 7500 Tournai, Belgium
Davaine began his studies at the parochial collège at St. Amand-les Eaus, entered the collège of Tournai (now in Belgium) in 1828, and finished his studies at Lille. At the end of 1830 Davaine started his medical courses in Paris, and in 1834 he competed for a hospital externship.
Davaine was born on March 19, 1812, in St.-Amand-les-Eaux, France, the sixth child of Benjamin-Joseph Davaine, distiller, and of Catherine Vanautrève.
Davaine began his studies at the parochial collège at St. Amand-les Eaus, entered the collège of Tournai (now in Belgium) in 1828, and finished his studies at Lille. At the end of 1830 Davaine started his medical courses in Paris, and in 1834 he competed for a hospital externship.
On 1 January 1835 Davaine became extern under Pierre Rayer at La Charité. In December 1837 he presented his doctoral thesis, on the hematocele of the tunica vaginalis, to a committee with Alfred Velpeau as its chairman.
From 1838, Davaine practiced medicine in Paris while carrying on important microbiological, parasitological, pathological, and general biological researches under Rayer.
Davaine’s most important contribution to science was in medical microbiology. As early as 1850 he and Rayer observed small rods, which he later called bactéridies, in the blood of a sheep suffering from anthrax. He did not immediately understand the significance of this observation; but from 1863 on, under the influence of Pasteur’s work on butyric fermentation, he demonstrated in a series of publications remarkable for their logic and method that the bactéridie (Bacillus anthracis) is the sole cause of anthrax.
During his research on anthrax Davaine distinguished another disease, bovine septicemia, but did not isolate the microbe (1865). In 1869 he stated that the microbes of septicemia are motile, while anthrax bacilli are not; putrefied septicemic blood is no longer virulent, while anthracic blood always is, in septicemia there is neither agglutination of the red blood corpuscles nor any splenomegaly, while anthrax always produces such symptoms.
For all his experimental inoculations Davaine used the recently invented Pravaz syringe rather than the lancet, which presented many inconveniences.
Davaine’s contributions to medical and veterinary microbiology were fundamental, for he was the first to recognize the pathogenic role of bacteria. He was not able, however, to elucidate the exact mode of transmission of anthrax because he was unaware that the bacillus had a resistant stage, the spore, that enabled it to survive and to recur in a contaminated region. This stage of the bacillus was described in 1876 by Robert Koch; and later (1877-1881) Pasteur, Émile Roux, and Chamberland definitively proved the role of the bacillus in the etiology of anthrax. Davaine, however, was one of the first medical microbiologists to recognize the role of the bacillus and to differentiate it from bovine septicemia.
Davaine’s many disputes at the Paris Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine with the enemies of the germ theory of disease - Leplat, Jaillard, Henri Bouley, André Sanson, Louis Béhier, Alfred Vulpian, and particularly Gabriel Colin - foreshadowed Pasteur’s conflicts a few years later.
Davaine’s other scientific contributions had to do with internal parasites of man and domestic animals. His important work on this subject, Traité des entozoaires, ran to two editions. As early as 1857 Davaine thought of tracking down intestinal worms by seeking their eggs in the stools, a procedure still followed. Experimentally he specified the mode of development of the Ascaridae (Ascaris lumbricoides) and of the Trichocephalus (Trichuris trichiura).
Among plant parasites Davaine studied, from 1854 to 1856, the cycle of the wheat worm (Anguina tritici) and suggested means of combating this nematode. He was also interested in the mold that causes fruit rot (1866). Thus, he should be considered a pioneer in the study of plant pathology.
Davaine also studied the amoebic movements of the leukocytes, which he noticed as early as 1850. In 1869 he demonstrated that these cells can absorb foreign bodies introduced into the blood and thus observed phagocytosis fourteen years before Élie Metchnikoff did (1883). He was the first to recognize (1852) the protandrous hermaphroditism of oysters. Several of his observations of animal teratology were written up in his “Mémoire sur les anomalies de l’oeuf (1860) and in his article “Monstres, Monstruosités” (1875) for the Dictionnaire Dechambre. Davaine’s interests further extended to anabiosis among such invertebrates as Protozoa, Nematoda, and Tardigrada (1856); the palatine organ of the Cyprinidae (1850); the thyrohyoid bone of the anoura (1849); and the color mechanism of the tree frog (1849).
In medicine, besides his publications on anthrax and septicemia, Davaine made numerous contributions - some in collaboration with Claude Bernard, Pierre Rayer, or A. Laboulbène - on anatomicpathological lesions observed in various animals. He also published the important “Mémoire sur la paralysie générale ou partielle des deux nerfs de la septième paire” (1852).
All this research was carried on while Davaine practiced medicine, for he never had a laboratory of his own nor held an official university position.
During the Franco-Prussian War, while serving in the ambulance corps, Davaine wrote a short philosophical book, Les éléments du bonheur (1871). This book summed up in a rather simplistic fashion his inner serenity and his faith in man. His last years were spent at Garches, where his property is now the Fondation Davaine.
Académie Nationale de Society Française Médecine Légale.
Davaine was for his humility and modesty, and did not seek honors.
On 23 January 1869 Davaine married an Englishwoman, Maria Georgina Forbes, by whom he had one son, Jules.
