Louis Couty (13 January 1854 in

Nantiat Nantiat (, ; oc, Nantiac) is a commune in the Haute-Vienne department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in west-central France. Inhabitants are known as ''Nantiauds''. See also * Communes of the Haute-Vienne department The following is a list ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

"Le Dr Louis Couty", ''Limoges Illustré'', 1 August 191

– 22 November 1884 in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

Empire of Brazil The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and (until 1828) Uruguay. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Dom ...

) was a French

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

and

physiologist Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemica ...

. He worked at the Laboratory of Experimental Physiology at the

National Museum of Rio de Janeiro The National Museum of Brazil ( pt, Museu Nacional) is the oldest scientific institution of Brazil. It is located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, where it is installed in the Paço de São Cristóvão (Saint Christopher's Palace), which is ins ...

, the first of its kind in Brazil. He was a collaborator of João Baptista de Lacerda (1846-1915), a Brazilian physiologist who was the lab's founder. Couty studied in France with

Alfred Vulpian Edmé Félix Alfred Vulpian (5 January 1826 – 18 May 1887) was a French physician and neurologist. He was the co-discoverer of Vulpian-Bernhardt spinal muscular atrophy and the Vulpian-Heidenhain-Sherrington phenomenon. Vulpian was born in Par ...

(1826–1887) and

Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard FRS (8 April 1817 – 2 April 1894) was a Mauritian physiologist and neurologist who, in 1850, became the first to describe what is now called Brown-Séquard syndrome. Early life Brown-Séquard was born at Port ...

(1817–1894). He came to Brazil to lecture on Industrial

Biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

at the Escola Politécnica do Rio de Janeiro. Disappointed with its local conditions, he asked to carry out his experimental research at the National Museum, where Lacerda was already active with a research line on

snake Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more ...

venom Venom or zootoxin is a type of toxin produced by an animal that is actively delivered through a wound by means of a bite, sting, or similar action. The toxin is delivered through a specially evolved ''venom apparatus'', such as fangs or a st ...

and other

toxin A toxin is a naturally occurring organic poison produced by metabolic activities of living cells or organisms. Toxins occur especially as a protein or conjugated protein. The term toxin was first used by organic chemist Ludwig Brieger (1849 ...

s. Couty began to study

curare Curare ( /kʊˈrɑːri/ or /kjʊˈrɑːri/; ''koo-rah-ree'' or ''kyoo-rah-ree'') is a common name for various alkaloid arrow poisons originating from plant extracts. Used as a paralyzing agent by indigenous peoples in Central and South ...

, a

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae excl ...

poison Poison is a chemical substance that has a detrimental effect to life. The term is used in a wide range of scientific fields and industries, where it is often specifically defined. It may also be applied colloquially or figuratively, with a broa ...

, and his first published paper was on its physiological properties, in 1876. Hearing about his work, the Brazilian

emperor An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife ( empress consort), mother ( ...

Dom Pedro II Dom PedroII (2 December 1825 – 5 December 1891), nicknamed "the Magnanimous" ( pt, O Magnânimo), was the second and last monarch of the Empire of Brazil, reigning for over 58 years. He was born in Rio de Janeiro, the seventh child of Em ...

visited the Laboratory and invited him to be its first director, providing also the necessary resources to support the research lines. Couty also did experiments on other toxic plants and animals, the physiological effects of

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...

, on the

pharmacology Pharmacology is a branch of medicine, biology and pharmaceutical sciences concerned with drug or medication action, where a drug may be defined as any artificial, natural, or endogenous (from within the body) molecule which exerts a biochemica ...

of mate,

coffee Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world. Seeds of ...

sugar cane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, perennial grass (in the genus '' Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fibrous stalk ...

alcohol Alcohol most commonly refers to: * Alcohol (chemistry), an organic compound in which a hydroxyl group is bound to a carbon atom * Alcohol (drug), an intoxicant found in alcoholic drinks Alcohol may also refer to: Chemicals * Ethanol, one of sev ...

, etc. He also studied

brain A brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as Visual perception, vision. I ...

physiology in

monkey Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incomple ...

s and even adventured himself into

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

, writing in 1881 an important book, one of the earliest sociological analyses published about the country, "Slavery in Brazil". In this work, Couty proved that Brazil, on the basis of the

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses inc ...

of 1872, had a very small organised

middle class The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. C ...

and that

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

owners (only about 500,000 in 12 million total, in a land of 5 million square km) were the "real" economical and political

elite In political and sociological theory, the elite (french: élite, from la, eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. ...

. Hence, his famous boutade, ''"Brazil has no people"''. He died unexpectedly at 30 years of age, after living less than 8 years in Rio, and his brilliant career, which could have been so important to the development of Brazilian physiology, was cut short. Couty's place in the history of biomedical science is preserved in a fresco painting at the entrance of the basic sciences building of the Federal University of São Paulo.

References

External links

The Laboratory of Experimental Physiology, Imperial and National Museum of Rio de Janeiro
''Dicionário Histórico-Biográfico das Ciências da Saúde no Brasil (1832-1930)''. Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro (In Portuguese). {{DEFAULTSORT:Couty, Louis French pharmacologists 19th-century French physicians French physiologists 1854 births 1884 deaths French expatriates in Brazil Expatriate academics in Brazil