Jean TANTON, the founder of urology in Val de Grâce Hospital

Jean Marie Thomas Tanton was born on December 21st, 1875 in Biziat. In 1895 he joined the Military Health School of Lyon. A graduate of the Faculty, and extern in the Civil Hospices of Lyon, he supported his thesis in 1899. After graduating as a major from this school, he joined the Military Health Service Application School, from which he also graduated as a major in 1899. He start his career in the bacteriology laboratory of Val de Grâce Hospital. He was then transfered to Algiers, to the Dey Military Hospital where he prepared for the competitive examination to obtain the Agregation in Surgery. In 1906, he joined the Chair of Army Surgery (war wounds) as Associate Professor at the School of Application of the Military Health Service. The direction of the urinary tract service was entrusted to him. His work on urethroplasty earned him the Ernest Godard Prize from the Academy of Sciences, Félix Guyon being its rapporteur. From 1911 to 1914, he directed a clinical journal of urology for the International Editorial Board. After graduating as an free Associate Professor in 1911, he was assigned to Morocco where he acquired solid experience in war surgery. This is how he was asked by the Steering Committee of the Treaty on Surgery of "Delbet and Le Dentu" to write the part devoted to limb fractures. Anxious to serve his country during the Great War, he requested his return to France in 1916. He has been assigned to a Surgical Automobile Ambulance no. 1. Jean Tanton is in direct contact with Paul Alquier, a former intern at the Paris Hospitals who was mobilized as head of the Fracture Center of Hospital 17 in Châlons-sur-Marne. They wrote a treaty on "apparatus in projectile fractures". As a member of the Inter-Allied Surgical Conference in 1917, he published several reports. In October 1918 he suffered from a iatrogenic injury causing infection of the forearm. Despite this, he resumed his surgical activities in November with an influx of wounded. When he caught the flu, this exhausted surgeon succumbed to myocarditis on December 19th, 1918 at the age of 43. He was initially buried in the national necropolis of Mont-Frenet. The French Remembrance Department had a commemorative plaque inaugurated on March 5, 1933 affixed in the Military Hospital of Châlons sur Marne. A vibrant tribute was paid to him during a ceremony presided over by Surgeon General Inspector H. Rouvillois, Director of the Health Service at the Ministry of War.