Bretonneau, Pierre

Related Category: Medicine: Biographies

(pyĕr brətônō´), 1778–1862, French physician. He performed (1825) the first successful tracheotomy for laryngeal diphtheria, wrote a treatise (1826) distinguishing between scarlet fever and diphtheria (which he named), described typhoid fever, and stated (1855) the germ theory of disease (which later became established largely through Pasteur's work).