Jean-François Bouley (Bouley jeune). Pioneer investigator in intermittent claudication.

Abstract

Reports of pathologic investigations as to the cause of intermittent claudication in horses were made in France in October, 1831, by veterinarian Jean-François Bouley. Obstructive clots in the femoral arteries were found to be responsible for the muscular changes causing limping. Bouley's work in the horse was used by Charcot in 1858 to understand the mechanism of claudication in the case of a soldier with gunshot wound in whom a traumatic aneurysm, clotting, and ischemia of the legs developed. This was not, however, the first medically reported case of human claudication from vascular occlusive disease; the one reported by Barth in 1835 seems to be the first. According to Dejerine in 1911, the disease in the horse appeared to be due to invasion of the vessels by a parasitic round worm; earlier he had ascribed some cases of human claudication to impaired circulation of the spinal cord. It was not until 1949, however, that Verbiest elaborated the concept of spinal stenosis to explain one type of human claudication.