title: 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.
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dracobly
mesh_terms: D004992:Ethics, Medical / Q000266:history; D032984:Ethics, Research / Q000266:history; D005602:France; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006805:Human Experimentation / Q000941:ethics / Q000266:history*; D006801:Humans; D013587:Syphilis / Q000266:history*