Jean Charles Faget
| Jean Charles Faget | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | June 26, 1818 New Orleans |
| Died | December 7, 1884 New Orleans |
| Occupation | Physician |
| Spouse(s) | Glady Ligeret de Chazey |
| Children | 13 |
Jean Charles Faget was a physician born on June 26, 1818 in New Orleans. He is best known for the Faget sign—a medical sign that is the unusual combination of fever and bradycardia. The sign is an important diagnostic symptom of yellow fever.
Faget was born to Jean Baptiste Faget and F. Le Mormand. His parents were refugees from Santo Domingo (Saint-Domingue). They fled Hispaniola during the Haitian Revolution and spent some time in Cuba before settling in New Orleans in 1809. Jean Charles was educated by Jesuits in New Orleans before furthering his education at Collège Rolin in Paris from 1830 to 1837. Faget was then admitted into the University of Paris' college of internal medicine and graduated magna cum laude in 1845. He returned to New Orleans and married Glady Ligeret de Chazey and became the father of thirteen children. He was the grandfather of Guy Henry Faget, and great-grandfather of Maxime Faget.
Faget was one of many well-educated French physicians to practice in New Orleans at the time. They had similar backgrounds to Faget either being the children of refugees from Santo Domingo or the upheavals of the French Revolution and ensuing rule by Napoleon I. Faget's education in Paris entered him into an elite circle of physicians known as the Société Médicale de la Nouvelle-Orléans.
His medical practice began during an era when yellow fever was a tremendous problem in New Orleans. The exact cause of yellow fever was not known at the time. Early scientists believed that it was caused by environmental problems like rotting food, weather conditions, and poor sanitation. Faget's observations of the disease prompted him to believe that the disease could be attributed to a specific microorganism. It is now known that yellow fever is a virus that is transmitted by the bite of female mosquitoes (the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, and other species) and is found in tropical and subtropical areas in South America and Africa. The origin of the disease is most likely to be Africa, from where it was introduced to South America through the slave trade in the 16th century. During Faget's lifetime, yellow fever was deemed one of the most dangerous infectious diseases.
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