Professor of surgery, first in field in gynaecological cancer surgery.
Like Paul Broca (1824-1880), his uncle Paul Reclus (1847-1914) and Samuel Pozzi (1848-1918), Jean Louis Faure(1863-1944) was born in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande in Gironde. He followed the Protestant College in his birth place and graduated in the Lyceum Louis-le-Grand in Paris. In 1884 he was admitted to the Parisian Faculty of Medicine. He studied under Alexis Legroux (1839-1894), professor of pathology in the Laennec Hospital from 1886 to 1890. Around 1890 he gave anatomy lessons, later in 1895 he became a hospital physician and worked as a general surgeon. In 1898 he became an associate professor of general surgery. From 1899 to 1904 he was lecturer of the surgical clinic at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital.
Some books he wrote: His dissertation “L’Appareil Suspenseur Du Foie: L’Hépatoptose Et L’Hépatopexie” (1892, The suspensory apparatus of the liver: Hepatoptosis and hepatopexy), “Leçons de clinique et de techniques opératoires” (1902, Clinical lessons and operative techniques), “L’hystérectomie” (1906, Hysterectomy) and “Traité de gynécologie médico-chirurgicale” (1911, Treatise on medical and surgical gynaecology)
By scrupulously studying the pathology and anatomy of dead bodies Jean Louis Faure became one of the leading surgeons of the Medical School of Paris. He wrote extensively about uterine cancer and the anatomy of the region. He was the first surgeon to perform and to develop a relatively save total abdominal hysterectomy procedure by median section (1896-1911). Before that the operative mortality of this procedure was very high (22-67%). Techniques he used for the drainage of peritonitis became classic. Before his lessons the more simple vaginal hysterectomy procedure was used, but with that “blind” method one cannot remove cancer that grows in the surrounding pelvic tissue. So the long time survival rate was low.
In 1918 he became lecturer of clinical gynaecology and in 1919 he followed up Samuel Pozzi as a professor of gynaecology at the Broca Hospital. In 1934 he became emeritus professor of surgery.
Personal
Faure married Madeleine Bourgeois 5 July 1888. They got four children.
In 1924 he became Commander of the Legion of Honour and became a member of the French Academy of Medicine. In 1924 was elected president of the Surgical Society.
He died 27 October 1944 in Saint Émilion.