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About Bernard Peyrilhe
- Bernard Peyrilhe (1737–1804) was a French surgeon, known as one of the founders of experimental cancer research.
- Peyrilhe was born in Pompignan, and became a lecturer at the Paris School of Surgery (École de Chirurgie).In 1773, Peyrilhe was studying for a PhD, when he wrote the first systematic review of cancer in a prize-winning essay which he submitted to the Academy of Letters and Fine Arts in Lyon in response to an essay competition entitled What is Cancer?.
- His essay covered the nature of the disease, its growth, treatment, and how a "virus" produced by the tumor caused wasting (cachexia).
- At the time, the term "virus" meant any substance which came from an animal's body and which could transmit a disease.
- Peyrilhe attempted to demonstrate this virus, by injecting an emulsion of fluid from a human breast cancer into a wound he had created on the back of a dog.
- He kept the dog at his home to observe it, but the dog developed an abscess at the injection site and howled so much that Peyrilhe's servants drowned it.
- As is now understood, the transfer of cancerous tissue between species is generally unsuccessful, as the recipient's immune system recognizes cells from a different species as foreign, and destroys them (a graft-versus-host interaction).Also in 1773, Peyrihle was the first surgeon to treat breast cancer by radical mastectomy which included both the pectoral muscle and axillary lymph nodes.
- He considered that the risks of amputating the pectoral muscle were outweighed by the otherwise certain outcome of death.Peyrilhe also successfully treated ulceration with carbolic acid, which was, at the time, a recently discovered acid.
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