Camille-Melchior Gibert

Who was Camille-Melchior Gibert?

Camille-Melchior Gibert was a French dermatologist who was a native of Paris. He was an intern to Laurent-Théodore Biett, and later a physician at the Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris. He died during the 1866 Paris cholera epidemic.

Gibert is remembered for providing the first accurate description of a papulosquamous skin disorder that he named pityriasis rosea. Historically this condition was also called "Gibert's disease". His best known written work on skin diseases was a tome called "Traité pratique des maladies spéciales de la peau".

In 1859, with Dr. Joseph Alexandre Auzias-Turenne, Gibert took part in a controversial experiment in which human patients were deliberately infected with syphilis in order to demonstrate the infectious nature of secondary syphilis.