Antoine Louis

Life & Legacy

Antoine Louis (French: [ɑ̃twan lwi]) (13 February 1723 – 20 May 1792) was a French surgeon and physiologist. He was originally trained in medicine by his father, a sergeant major at a local military hospital. As a young man he moved to Paris, where he served as gagnant-maîtrise at the Salpêtrière. In 1750 he was appointed professor of physiology, a position he held for 40 years. In 1764 he was appointed lifetime secretary to the Académie Royale de Chirurgie.
Louis is credited with designing a prototype of the guillotine. For a period of time after its invention, the guillotine was called a louisette. However, it was later named after French physician Joseph Ignace Guillotin, whose advocacy of a more humane method of capital punishment prompted the guillotine's design.
Louis published numerous articles on surgery, including several biographies of surgeons who died in his lifetime. He also published the surgical aphorisms of Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave. The "angle of Louis" is another name for the sternal angle, which is the point of junction between the manubrium and the body of the sternum.