1866-1937 · General practitioner
Victor Despeignes
French physician trained at Lyon, working as a district physician at Les Échelles in Savoie in 1896, who in July 1896 treated a neighbour's abdominal tumour with X-rays. A 2016 French review regards him as the most serious candidate for the first X-ray treatment of a cancer; the diagnosis in his patient is disputed.
Milestones
Sources
Cosset JM. [The dawn of radiotherapy, between strokes of genius, dramas and controversies]. Cancer Radiother. 2016;20(6-7):595-600.
Foray N. [Victor Despeignes (1866-1937): how a hygienist became the first radiation oncologist]. Cancer Radiother. 2013;17(3):244-54.
Foray N. [1896: How nascent radiotherapy gathered Roentgen, Pasteur and the Lumière brothers]. Cancer Radiother. 2016;20(8):820-823.
El Nachef L, Bouchet A, Bourguignon M, Foray N. When DNA Mutations Interplay with Cellular Proliferation: A Narrative History of Theories of Carcinogenesis. Cancers (Basel). 2024;16(11).