Paul Carnot

Who is Paul Carnot?

Paul Carnot was a French physician born in Limoges.

He served as médecin des hôpitaux in Paris, becoming a professor of therapeutic medicine in 1918 to the Paris medical faculty. In 1922 he was elected as a member to the Académie de Médecine.

In 1906 he coined the term hémopoïétine to define a humoral factor he believed was responsible for regulation of red blood cell production. This being based on experiments with laboratory rabbits that he conducted with his assistant C. DeFlandre. They noticed that an increase of reticulocytes in normal rabbits occurred following the injection of blood plasma taken from anemic donor rabbits who had earlier been subject to bloodletting. Findings from their research were published in a paper titled Sur l'activité hémopoïétique du sérum au cours de la régénération du sang.

Carnot was the author of numerous treatises on a wide array of medical subjects. With Paul Brouardel, Augustin Nicolas Gilbert and others, he published the multi-volume Nouveau traité de médecine et de thérapeutique. The following are a few of his better known writings: