Descemet was held in high esteem by all his associates in the Paris Faculty of Medicine. He was generally recognized by the medical men of France to be a skilled anatomist and a careful and trustworthy observer. The various offices which he held at one time or another in the course of his active life give further proof of the correctness of the estimate which I have furnished of this admirable French physician. His death occurred at Paris in 1810.
Among his published writings the following deserve to receive special mention:—
“An sola lens crystallina cataractae sedes?”—Paris, 1758.
“Catalogues of the garden plants cultivated by the apothecaries of Paris,” Paris, 1759.
“Mémoire et observations sur la choroïde, etc.,” in “Mémoires des Savans Étrangers de l’Academie Royale des Sciences,” tome V., 1768.
In the last-named article valuable information is furnished with regard to the membrane which bears his name. Here, for instance, is revealed the fact that with advancing age the attachment of the membrane to the cornea gradually becomes less firm until finally, at the age of about sixty, it becomes completely detached.
Jacques Delpech was born at Toulouse, in the south-western part of France, in 1772. After he had completed his preliminary studies at Toulouse he went to Montpellier, took the regular course in medicine at the university, and was given the degree of Doctor in Surgery in 1801. While residing in that city he acted as an Officier de Santé in one of the military hospitals. The following year he was given the position of Instructor in Anatomy at the Toulouse Medical School, which at that period bore the title of “Société de Médecine et de Pharmacie.” It was here that he first manifested his great gifts as a teacher, his success in this respect being truly remarkable. In 1812 he offered himself, along with several other competitors, as a candidate for the chair of clinical surgery in the Faculty of the Montpellier Medical School, and was given this coveted position. It should be stated, however, that previous to this event, for a period of several years following his brief service as an instructor in anatomy at Toulouse, he had devoted himself with great zeal and thoroughness to the study of surgery in Paris, and was therefore specially well prepared for this competitive test. In the new field in which, from this time forward to the end of his career, he worked with unflagging enthusiasm, Delpech had ample opportunity to show to the world his great talents as a teacher of surgery.
There was one branch of surgical work in which he took a greater interest than in all the others, made many ingenious discoveries, and thus gained great distinction; I refer to the pathology and treatment of deformities, the science of orthopedics. He not only built up a large practice in cases of this nature, but he also wrote a valuable treatise on the subject. This work, which was published in Paris in 1828–1829, bears the title: “De l’Orthomorphie, par Rapport à l’Espèce Humaine, ou Recherches Anatomico-Pathologiques sur les Causes, les Moyens de Prévenir, Ceux de Guérir les Principales Difformités, et sur les Véritables Fondemens de l’Art Appelé Orthopédique.” It is, briefly stated, a complete treatise on the pathology and treatment of deformities of the human frame, one of the first (possibly the very first) of its kind published in a modern language. From statements which he makes in the course of his text it appears that Delpech recognized at an early date that it is upon the muscles surrounding a joint that its solidity is chiefly dependent, and consequently that all lesions involving the muscular apparatus in the neighborhood of a joint are very potent factors in the causation of deformities. In addition, he states that the absence of exact fitting of two opposite articular surfaces, one upon the other, during the period of development of the skeleton, constitutes another and very important cause of deformities both in the limbs and in the trunk. To these general causes, he says, there may be added the following: muscular debility, the effects produced by certain attitudes of the body, by the paralysis and also by the contractures of certain muscles, by the effects of rheumatism, by softening of the bones, etc.
In other sections of the treatise he discusses in a most practical and interesting manner the subjects of diagnosis and treatment of deformities. In the remarkable orthopedic hospital which he established in Montpellier he treated, with enthusiasm and untiring faithfulness, large numbers of patients suffering from deformities of all sorts, thus gaining a wide experience in this particular class of cases, and constantly increasing his skill in treating them successfully.