Jean-François Ameline (

Caen Caen (; ; ) is a Communes of France, commune inland from the northwestern coast of France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Calvados (department), Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inha ...

, 28 August 1762 -

, 3 December 1835) was a French

physician A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the Medical education, study, Med ...

and

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

at the medical faculty of Caen, and is considered one of the first users of

papier-mâché file:JacmelMardiGras.jpg, upright=1.3, Mardi Gras papier-mâché masks, Haiti Papier-mâché ( , , - the French term "mâché" here means "crushed and ground") is a versatile craft technique with roots in ancient China, in which waste paper is s ...

for

anatomical model An anatomical model is a three-dimensional representation of human or animal anatomy, used for medical and biological education. From the 16th to the 19th century, the most prominent models were made from wax. These techniques were developed part ...

s. Before this,

beeswax Bee hive wax complex Beeswax (also known as cera alba) is a natural wax produced by honey bees of the genus ''Apis''. The wax is formed into scales by eight wax-producing glands in the abdominal segments of worker bees, which discard it in o ...

had been used to make

s. Around 1810, Ameline started making models that were much more robust than the wax ones used at the time. He used

to model body parts on a real

human skeleton The human skeleton is the internal framework of the human body. It is composed of around 270 bones at birth – this total decreases to around 206 bones by adulthood after some bones get fused together. The bone mass in the skeleton makes up ab ...

enabling the body to be taken apart as in a

dissection Dissection (from Latin ' "to cut to pieces"; also called anatomization) is the dismembering of the body of a deceased animal or plant to study its anatomical structure. Autopsy is used in pathology and forensic medicine to determine the cause of ...

, revealing the deeper elements, for example the passage of a

nerve A nerve is an enclosed, cable-like bundle of nerve fibers (called axons). Nerves have historically been considered the basic units of the peripheral nervous system. A nerve provides a common pathway for the Electrochemistry, electrochemical nerv ...

or a

blood vessel Blood vessels are the tubular structures of a circulatory system that transport blood throughout many Animal, animals’ bodies. Blood vessels transport blood cells, nutrients, and oxygen to most of the Tissue (biology), tissues of a Body (bi ...

between the

muscle Muscle is a soft tissue, one of the four basic types of animal tissue. There are three types of muscle tissue in vertebrates: skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle, and smooth muscle. Muscle tissue gives skeletal muscles the ability to muscle contra ...

s, or the proportions of the

intestines The gastrointestinal tract (GI tract, digestive tract, alimentary canal) is the tract or passageway of the digestive system that leads from the mouth to the anus. The tract is the largest of the body's systems, after the cardiovascular system. ...

in the

abdomen The abdomen (colloquially called the gut, belly, tummy, midriff, tucky, or stomach) is the front part of the torso between the thorax (chest) and pelvis in humans and in other vertebrates. The area occupied by the abdomen is called the abdominal ...

. The results were spectacular at first sight, but the representation of many of the elements proved inadequate. From 1816, he presented papers to the medical society of

before moving on to the

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

ian learned circles, who from 1819 to 1821 all praised his work but found it rather expensive. A report by the Royal Advisory Council for Public Education in December 1821 described his invention as follows: ‘He uses

cardboard Cardboard is a generic term for heavy paper-based products. Their construction can range from a thick paper known as paperboard to corrugated fiberboard, made of multiple plies of material. Natural cardboards can range from grey to light brown ...

to make a solid

pulp Pulp may refer to: * Pulp (fruit), the inner flesh of fruit * Pulp (band), an English rock band Engineering * Pulp (paper), the fibrous material used to make paper * Dissolving pulp, highly purified cellulose used in fibre and film manufacture ...

, light and flexible, and in no way brittle, capable of taking on any shape one wants to give it, and retaining it unchanged without shrinking.’ He waged a lifelong feud with his rival Louis Auzoux, who outdid him with a better idea in 1822, and published numerous articles accusing him of

plagiarism Plagiarism is the representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 ''Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close ...

. They each used a different technique to make their anatomical models: Ameline used modelling, Auzoux moulding. The latter method was more suitable for large scale production and volume work, making it cheaper. This controversy lasted until the death of both of them.

Publications

* ''Mémoire sur l'utilité d'anatomie artificielle chirurgicale'' (1819, Paris). * ''Mémoire sur l'utilité des pièces d'anatomie artificielle chirurgicale'' (1820, Caen : A. Leroy). * ''Observations sur les pièces d'anatomie de M. le Docteur Auzoux'' (1825). In this book he comments and criticizes each of the publications written about Auzoux during the presentation of his papers before the various academies. “If Mr. Auzoux is not an inventor, he has so far perfected his model and has so many favorable differences with it, that we may do Mr. Auzoux an injustice by praising Ameline today.” (Report of the Société Médicale d'Emulation, 1823, quoted by Ameline himself in this work).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ameline, Jean-François 1762 births 1835 deaths 18th-century French physicians