Albert Gombault

Albert Gombault (wood engraving from the Collection BIU Santé Médecine)

François Alexis Albert Gombault (2 October 1844 – 23 September 1904) was a French neurologist who was a native of Orléans.

He studied medicine in Paris, where he was a student and collaborator of Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893). From 1887 he was associated with the Hospice d'Ivry, and for a number of years served as chef de travaux in the pathological anatomy laboratory of Victor André Cornil (1837–1908).

In 1880 Gombault published an early description involving a type of hypertrophic neuritis that was later to be known as Dejerine-Sottas syndrome. With Charcot, he performed important research of obstructive biliary cirrhosis.^[1] In 1877 he published Etude sur la sclérose latérale amyotrophique, a study on "Charcot disease", better known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Eponyms associated with Gombault

• Charcot-Gombault necrosis: a biliary infarct, which is a late-stage complication of extra-hepatic cholestasis. (Eponym known from historical literature).
• Gombault-Philippe triangle: a triangular field formed in the conus medullaris by the fibers of the septomarginal tract. Named with pathologist Claudien Philippe (1866–1903).

See also

• A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière

References

• Albert Gombault @ Who Named It
• Dorlands Medical Dictionary (definition of eponym)