Armand Trousseau

Studying medicine under Pierre Bretonneau in Tours, Trousseau became physician to the Paris hospitals and professor of clinical medicine at the Hôtel-Dieu, renowned for mesmerizing bedside diagnostic demonstrations that drew international physicians.

Trousseau perfected surgical tracheotomy for children suffocating from diphtheritic croup, saving over 200 young lives. In 1861, he described the Trousseau sign of latent hypocalcemia (carpopedal spasm elicited by blood pressure cuff). In 1865, upon discovering thrombophlebitis in his own arm, he calmly diagnosed his own incurable occult stomach cancer, dying six months later.