Antoine Laurent Bayle

Life & Legacy

Antoine Laurent Jessé Bayle (13 January 1799 – 29 March 1858) was a French medical doctor known for first describing paralytic dementia. He was born in Le Vernet, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, and was a nephew to pathologist Gaspard Laurent Bayle (1774–1816).
Bayle studied medicine in Paris, and worked as an intern under Antoine-Athanase Royer-Collard (1768–1825) at the Charenton mental asylum. Later he became an associate professor and deputy librarian of the Faculté de Médecine de Paris. He resigned from this position in 1834 and opened a private practice.
In 1822 Bayle was the first medical doctor to provide a comprehensive description of general paresis, which is sometimes referred to as paralytic dementia, general paralysis of the insane, or "maladie de Bayle" in medical literature. In 1824 he founded the journal Revue médicale, and from 1828 to 1837 was publisher of the multi-volume Bibliothèque de thérapeutique (Library of Therapeutics).