Duchenne de Boulogne - Biography

Biography

Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne was the son of a fisherman, descended from a long line of mariners who had settled in the Boulogne-sur-Mer region of France. In opposition to his father's wishes that he become a sailor, and driven by an innate love for science, Duchenne enrolled at the University of Douai where he received his Baccalauréat at the age of 19. He then trained under a number of distinguised Paris physicians including René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laënnec (1781–1826), Baron Guillaume Dupuytren (1777–1835), François Magendie (1783–1855), and Léon-Jean-Baptiste Cruveilhier (1791–1874). He graduated in medicine in Paris in 1831 and presented his Thèse de Médecine, a monograph on burns, before returning to his native Boulogne where he opened a practice. Duchenne married in 1831, but his wife died of puerperal fever during childbirth two years later. Duchenne’s mother in law spread rumours that the death of his wife was caused by the fact that only he was present at the delivery, and after this he was kept separate from his only son by his wife’s family, only to be reunited with him near the end of his life.

In 1835, Duchenne began experimenting with therapeutic "électropuncture" (a technique recently invented by Magendie and Jean-Baptiste Sarlandière by which electric shock was administered beneath the skin with sharp electrodes to stimulate the muscles). After a brief and unhappy second marriage, Duchenne returned to Paris in 1842 in order to continue his medical research. There, he developed a non-invasive technique of muscle stimulation that used faradic shock on the surface of the skin, which he called "électrisation localisée". He articulated these theories in his work, On Localized Electrization and its Application to Pathology and Therapy, first published in 1855. A pictorial supplement to the second edition, Album of Pathological Photographs (Album de Photographies Pathologiques) was published in 1862. A few months later, the first edition of his now much-discussed work, The Mechanism of Human Physiology, was published. Were it not for this small, but remarkable, work, his next publication, the result of nearly 20 years of study, Duchenne's Physiology of Movements, Demonstrated with the Aid of Electrical Experimentation and Clinical Observation, and Applicable to the Study of Paralyses and Deformations, his most important contribution to medical science, might well have gone unnoticed.

Despite his unorthodox procedures, and his often uncomfortable relations with the senior medical staff with whom he worked, Duchenne's single-mindedness and relentless and exacting research, soon obtained him an international standing as a neurologist at the forefront of his field. Moreover, he is considered as one of the developers of electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics. By electricity he also determined that smiles resulting from true happiness not only utilize the muscles of the mouth but also those of the eyes. Such "genuine" smiles are known as Duchenne smiles in his honor. He is also credited with the discovery of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Duchenne died of haemorrhagic bleeding in 1875, after several years of illness.

Duchenne effectively used the newly invented medium of photography to capture electrically induced expressions of his subjects, but wasn't able to record the actual movement of the facial muscles, a fact he complained about in his writings.