Edmé François Chauvot de Beauchêne

Edmé François Chauvot de Beauchêne (1780, Île-de-France – 1830, Paris), was a French physician, surgeon and anatomist. He was Chief of l'hopital Saint-Antoine Paris, the Deputy Chief of Anatomical Works of the Faculté de Médecine de Paris (both part of the University of France). He was a member of the Société Anatomique de Paris and a Member of l'Academie de Médecine d'Île-de-France as well being the personal physician of Louis XVIII and the surgeon of Charles X. He is buried in Père-Lachaise Cemetery.

Beauchêne skull supplied by Maison Deyrolle in the collections of Muséum de Toulouse

Edmé François Chauvot de Beauchêne was the inventor of the disarticulated or exploded human skull used for medical teaching and known as the Beauchêne skull and incorrectly attributed to Claude Beauchene. The skull bones are disarticulated along the sutures and mounted at a distance on brass supports. The bones are attached to the brass rods by rivets and the assembly is mounted on independent adjustable and modular brass rods which allow the jaw to advance and the top of the skull to be tilted back. Dentition is revealed with dissection of the left cortical bone showing the dental roots and with the nerve branches pigmented in red. One fabricator was Maison Tramond, 9, rue de l'ecole de Medicine, Paris. The skulls were supplied by the medical school.

References

• Robert J. Spinner, Jean-François Vincent, and Alexandra P. Wolanskyj, 2011 Discovering the elusive Beauchêne: The originator of the disarticulated anatomic technique. Clinical Anatomy 24 (7) 797–801
• Robert J. Spinner Alexandra P. Wolanskyj, 2012 The arduous journey to find a portrait of Beauchêne fils A Famous Anatomist and Surgeon Clinical Anatomy 25 (6) 683–686

External links

• Family tree