The son of French artist and mapmaker Ambroise Tardieu, Auguste Ambroise Tardieu (1818-1879) became the pre-eminent forensic medical scientist of the mid-19th century. He was President of the French Academy of Medicine, as well as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Paris.
Tardieu's specialties were forensic medicine and toxicology. His authoritative book on forensic toxicology (Étude médico-légale et clinique sur l'empoisonnement) has been called a model of clarity and clinical precision. [1]
Over his 23-year career, Tardieu was asked to participate in 5,238 cases as a forensic expert, including many famous and notorious historical crimes. Using his cases as a statistical base, Tardieu wrote over a dozen volumes of forensic analysis, covering such diverse areas as abortion, drowning, hanging, insanity, poisoning, suffocation, syphilis, and tattoos (Labbé, 2005).
Among his many achievements, Tardieu wrote what may be the first book in recorded history on the sexual abuse of children: Etude Médico-Légale sur les Attentats aux Mœurs (1857). (Masson, 1984, pp. 15-19 and 34-38). "The book went through seven editions: 1857, 1858, 1859, 1862, 1867, 1873, and 1878. The first edition contained 176 pages; the last, 296 pages."[2]. Masson's translation of the French title of first edition is "A Medico-legal Study of Assaults on Decency"[3] .
In 1860 an article of Tardieu was published in the Annales d'hygiène publique et de médecine légale entitled Etude médico-légale sur les sévices et mauvais traitements exercés sur des enfants (A Medico-legal Study of Cruelty and Brutal treatment Inflicted on Children) [4] which catalogued thirty-two cases of maltreatment suffered by children at the hands of their caretakers. Those cases Tardieu had been commissioned by the court to examine from a medico-legal point of view. The most elaborate case in the article is one involving sexual abuse (lifeexperience of Adelina Defert)[5]. The criminal court at Reims, on December 3, 1859, heard the case of Adelina Defert, seventeen years old. Dr. Nidart, a physician in Sainte-Ménehould, was commissioned by the court to examine her. Dr. Nidart wrote the first of two reports on July 22, 1859, the second report on July 29. [6] Both reports are part of Tardieu's article. Masson states that Tardieu regarded sexual abuse as a kind of physical abuse, since he included that case history in the article. [7]
Since the article was not referred to in the later literature, Tardieu decided to reproduce it in his book on wounds (Étude sur les blessures.), published nineteen years later, in 1879, the year of his death. Masson quotes Tardieu from p. 70 of that book: "This study, undertaken eighteen years ago, is the first to have been attempted on this subject, about which writers in the field of legal medicine have subsequently remained completely silent." [8]
In recognition of his first clinical descriptions of battered children, Battered child syndrome is also known as Tardieu's syndrome.[9] Unfortunately, his path-breaking insights and research into the prevalence and forensic signs of child abuse were largely ignored (Labbé, 2005).
Far more successful were Tardieu's publications on the terrible working conditions of young boys and girls in mines and factories. For example, his study of copper workers (both child and adult) led to a radical improvement in their working conditions (Labbé, 2005).
Tardieu's ecchymoses, subpleural spots of ecchymosis that follow the death of a newborn child by strangulation or suffocation, were first described by Tardieu in 1859, and were so named in his honor. [10]
- 1843: De la morve et du farcin chronique chez l’homme.
- 1849-50: Mémoire sur les modifications physiques et chimiques que détermine dans certaines parties du corps l’exercice des diverse professions, pour servir à la recherche médico-légale de l’identité.
- 1852: Voiries et cimetières.
- 1855: Études hygiéniques sur la profession de mouleur en cuivre, pour servir à l’histoire des professions exposées aux poussières inorganiques.
- 1855: Étude médico-légale sur le tatouage considéré comme signe d’identité.
- 1856: Étude médico-légale sur l’avortement, suivie d’observations et de recherches pour servir à l’histoire médico-légale des grossesses fausses et simulées.
- 1856: Étude historique et médico-légale sur les sur la fabrication et l’emploi des alumettes chimiques.
- 1857: Étude médico-légale sur les attentats aux moeurs.
- 1852-54: Dictionnaire d’hygiène publique et de salubrité.
- 1860: Etude médico-légale sur les sévices et mauvais traitements exercés sur des enfants [11]
- 1864: Étude médico-légale sur les maladies provoquées ou communiquées comprenant l’histoire médico-légale de la syphilis et de ses divers modes de ransmission.
- 1867: Étude médico-légale et clinique sur l'empoisonnement.
- 1868: Étude médico-légale sur l’infanticide.
- 1870: Étude médico-légale sur la pendaison, la strangulation, les suffocations.
- 1872: Étude médico-légale sur la folie.
- 1879: Étude médico-légale sur les maladies produites accidentellement ou involontairement.
- 1879: Étude sur les blessures.
Online
Sources
Notes
- ^ a b Auguste Ambroise Tardieu (www.whonamedit.com)
- ^ according to Masson in his note no.8 to chapter 2. Freud at the Paris Morgue, pages 22, 207
- ^ Masson, p. 22
- ^ Translation by Masson, p.15
- ^ Adelina Defert, pp.377-389
- ^ Masson, pages 20, 21
- ^ According to Pons Dictionary French/German sévices means Mißhandlungen. The german word Mißbrauch is translated with the words abus/emploi abusif (German/French section of the same Dictionary.
- ^ Masson, p. 22
- ^ Tardieu's syndrome (www.whonamedit.com)
- ^ Tardieu's ecchymoses or spots (www.whonamedit.com)
- ^ published in Annales d'hygiène publique et de médecine légale
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