Ethics and Experimentation on Human Subjects in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France: The Story of the 1859 Syphilis Experiments

Abstract

This article examines a series of experiments involving the deliberate infection of human subjects with syphilis that were performed in Paris in 1859 by Dr. Camille Gibert and Dr. Joseph Alexandre Auzias-Turenne. Using the scientific literature on syphilis, the contemporary reaction in the French medical press to Gibert's and Auzias-Turenne's experiments, and the private papers of Auzias-Turenne, this paper places these experiments within a context of scientific and professional rivalry, and seeks to show how both moral and scientific concerns shaped and limited experimental practices in mid-nineteenth-century France.

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