BRETONNEAU, PIERRE-FIDLE

born April 3, 1778, Tours, Fr. died Feb. 18, 1862, Passy French epidemiologist who in 1825 performed the first successful tracheotomy (incision of and entrance into the trachea through the skin and muscles of the neck). He received his M.D. degree in Paris in 1815 and became chief physician of the hospital at Tours the following year. Bretonneau made the clinical distinction of diphtheria, to which he gave its name. He also distinguished between typhoid and typhus. In his doctrine of specific causes of infectious diseases, he foreshadowed the germ theory of Pasteur.