Jean-nicolas Marjolin: Destined to Be Forgotten?

JEAN-NICOLAS MARJOLIN is described in the Dictionna-.re Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales1 as one of those figures who are quickly forgotten: his work, it says, was not for posterity. But eponymous fame is capricious and today the British Medical Dictionary2 has an entry defining Marjolin's ulcer as a 'squamous carcinoma developing in a chronic benign ulcer, e.g. a varicose ulcer, an old unhealed burn, or a wound scar'. Marijolin would probably be as surprised as his biographer of I872 at such a memorial. It is somewhat startling to observe the sparkle of Marjolin's early career in view of his failure to leave a distinct mark on history. He was born at Ray-sur-Saone in 1780, made a false start as a lawyer, served for a short time in the Army, and began medicine in Commercy Hospital, from where he was sent to Paris by his mother in i8oo with a letter of recommendation for Boyer. In I803 he came third in an examination out of which Magendie emerged seventh. The following year he carried off a first prize after only three weeks' preparation. The subsequently famous Dupuytren thereupon took him under his wing and recruited him to his new 'Societe Anatomique'. Marjolin was a very active member until his teaching finally absorbed all his attention. From interne at the Hotel-Dieu, Marjolin became successively assistant in anatomy (I805), prosector (i8o6), and qualified as M.D. in i8o8. During a period when private medical schools flourished he established one of his own in I8I0, andsoon made it one of the most popular; in I8I2, for instance, he had on his roll 227 students for anatomy and 130 for surgery. The generosity which marked his character throughout his life was already made evident by his practice of admitting poor students free. Marjolin the brilliant teacher clashed with the ambitious Dupuytren in i8 i 2 and saw his friendship utterly shattered. The Chair of Operative Surgery finally went to Dupuytren after a series of incidents which throw a vivid light on the characters of the two men. The date for submission of theses was delayed because of a trumped up excuse by Dupuytren than an accident in his rooms had interfered with his work; for support he persuaded some workmen to sign an affidavit. During the oral examination he tried to turn the argument to a weak spot in Marjolin's thesis, but the latter gave him the very reply with which he himself had earlier hidden a chink in his own armour, viz. that a chapter had been inadvertently left at the printers. Triumphant in spite of all this, hewas never again to treat Marjolin as a friend, and when the latter became his assistant at the Hotel-Dieu in I8I6 he found nothing more encouraging to say than: 'Monsieur, take an apron and do your rounds. It is intended that you take my place when I am absent or ill. Let me inform you that I am never absent or ill'. Marjolin was to have more than average success in spite of his bloody encounter with Dupuytren. His reputation as a teacher was high and in i8i8 he resisted the competition of Larrey, Magendie (again!) and J. Cloquet to carry off the Chair of External Pathology. This he held for thirty-two years until his death in i850. During this time he produced contributions to the Bibliothlque Midicale, a preface to the Mimoires de l'Acadimie de Chirurgie3 which is virtually a history of French eighteenthcentury surgery, a manual of anatomy, and thirty-two articles for the Dictionnaire de M6decine. In I828 his section on ulcers appeared in this dictionary4 where he described four examples of a type of ulcer to which he gave the name ulcJre verruqueux. The description occupied twenty-six lines, about half a page. It did not say that the ulcers were malignant, nor did it associate them with scars or pre-existing chronic ulcers. It was in I850, the year that Marjolin died, that Robert William Smith5 who had 383