RICORD, PHILIP, a distinguished French physician, was the son of a wealthy ship owner, and was born Dec. 10, 1800, at Baltimore, whither his father had gone in 1700 to repair his fortunes, which he had lost under the India company. He came in 1820 to . Paris, where he was attached in succession to the Hotel-Dieu under Dupuytren, and to the Pitie under Lisfranc. He graduated as doctor in medicine in 1826; but was unable, from the scantiness of his private means, to begin practice in Paris. His professional career, therefore, commenced at Olivet, near Orleans, and was thence transferred to Crofiy-sur-Oureq, where he rapidly rose to distinction as a practitioner. In 1828 he returned to Paris, where he delivered two annual courses of lectures at the Pitie on sur gical operations; and was appointed surgeon-in-chief to the hospital for venereal diseases. This post he held with brilliant success till his retirement in Oct., 1860. It was here that he won his world-wide reputation in the specialty which he had chosen—a reputation which he owed to his combination of accurate physiological and pathological knowledge with great manual dexterity as a surgeon, and felicitous inventiveness and resource as a physician. He did much to improve the classification of enthetic diseases; and at the venereal hospital delivered annually. from 1834, a course of lectures on syphilology, for which a special amphitheater was granted to hint. For his suggestions on the cure of varicocele and on the operation of urethro-plasty he received in 1842 one of the Mont von prizes. M. Rieord's practice is the most extensive and the most lucrative in Paris, inso
much that while an inmate of the debtors' prison at Clichy, he was literally besieged by crowds of patients. He has been since 1850 member of the academy of medicine (sec tion of surgical pathology); member of the surgical society; and consulting.surgeon to the dispensary of public health. In 1862 he was appointed physician in ordinary to prince Napoleon; and in 1869 consulting surgeon to the late emperor ; having already on Aug. 12, 1860, been raised to the distinction of commander of the legion of honor. His works tire numerous, the more important of them being these: On the Employment of fits Speculum &viale (1833), invented by himself; On the Blennorrhagia of the Female (1834); On the Employment of Mercurial Ointment in the Treatment of Erysipelas (1836); The Monog raph!' of Chancre (in which he gives a detailed exposition of his own system); Theory of the Nature and Treatment of Epididymitis (1838); Treatise on Venereal Maladies (1838); On Blennor•hagie Ophthalmia (1842); Iconographical Clinic of the Venereal hospital (1842-51); and On Syphilization and the Contagion from Secondary Accidents (1853). He has also contributed to the medical journals a multitude of memoirs, observations, researches, and communications on his specialty. His latest works are those entitled Letters on Syphilis (3d ed. 1863), and Leetures on Chancre (2d ed. 1860), both remarkable for their fluency and grace of style.