Maurice Raynaud (1834-1881)

Maurice Raynaud was a physician with a particular interest in the history of medicine, and went on to get a further doctorate in letters for his historical research.

In his doctorial thesis published in 1862 Local Asphyxia and Symmetrical Gangrene of the Extremities, Raynaud described which was later named Raynaud’s disease. Raynaud’s disease is a disorder of peripheral blood vessels in which blood flow in the fingers and toes stops when they are exposed to cold.

Auguste Gabriel Maurice Raynaud

In 1863, Raynaud published a book entitles Doctors of the Time of Moliere. A Doctors of the Time of Moliere was well-respected text.

He did not have a particularly notable professional career thereafter, although he was regarded as a fine clinical and was elected to the French Academy of Medicine.
Maurice Raynaud (1834-1881)

Raynaud’s syndrome

In Europe, the broad term Raynaud’s phenomenon is used to described any form of cold-related vasospasm. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century debate over the mechanism of gangrene there was a group of cases that could not be explained by ‘ossification by the arteries’ not by great obstacles in the ‘vascular cavities’.

In 1862, the young French physician Maurice Raynaud meticulously described in his medical school thesis 25 patients with spontaneous symmetric gangrene of the extremities.

He described an initial ‘pallor’ that was replaced in more severe cases by a cyanotic color and then a vermillion that finally gave way to the normal pink.

Sir Jonathan Hutchinson

In 1888, Raynaud’s thesis was translated into English and a year later Sir Jonathan Hutchinson gave Raynaud’s eponym to the digital vasospastic phenomenon previously described in 1862.

He realized that the symptoms described by Raynaud could be associated with a number of disorders and were not due to one disease. In 1896, he proposed the term ‘Raynaud’s phenomenon’ to described these vasospastic attacks.

In 1932, Allen and Brown, established minimal criteria for diagnosing Raynaud’s disease: bilaterality of symptoms; absence of gangrene; absence of other primary disease, especially collagen-vascular diseases: and symptoms of at least 2 years’ duration.
Raynaud’s syndrome