Auguste Ambroise Tardieu

Who was Auguste Ambroise Tardieu?

Auguste Ambroise Tardieu was a French medical doctor and the pre-eminent forensic medical scientist of the mid-19th century.

Tardieu's specialties were forensic medicine and toxicology. His authoritative book on forensic toxicology has been called a model of clarity and clinical precision.

Over his 23-year career, Tardieu was asked to participate in 5,238 cases as a forensic expert, including many famous and notorious historical crimes. Using his cases as a statistical base, Tardieu wrote over a dozen volumes of forensic analysis, covering such diverse areas as abortion, drowning, hanging, insanity, poisoning, suffocation, syphilis, and tattoos. Additionally—and controversially during his lifetime—Tardieu wrote what may be the first medical or scientific book on child sexual abuse. Far more successful were Tardieu's publications on the terrible working conditions of young boys and girls in mines and factories. For example, his study of copper workers led to a radical improvement in their working conditions.

Tardieu's ecchymoses, subpleural spots of ecchymosis that follow the death of a newborn child by strangulation or suffocation, were first described by Tardieu in 1859, and were so named in his honor.