Paul Gibier
| Paul Gibier | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 1851 France |
| Died | 1900 |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Doctor |
| Known for | Spiritualism |
Paul Gibier (1851–1900) was a French doctor and bacteriologist, a researcher into contagious diseases, who founded the New York Pasteur Institute. This was a pioneering private research laboratory concerned with developing bio-medical cures including vaccines and anti-toxins. He was also known for his interest in psychic phenomena.
Paul Gibier was born in France in 1851. He worked in a machine shop, served in the French cavalry in Africa and worked as a clerk for a railway company. He then attended the University of Paris where he obtained a degree in medicine. His doctoral theses of 1884 was on rabies in animals, and was supervised by one of Louis Pasteur's friends. Soon after he graduated the French government sent him to Germany to investigate "the organization of laboratories for medical research." Gibier received a gold medal for his investigations into an outbreak of cholera in Spain, and was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour for his work on cholera in the south of France.
In Paris Gibier formed a circle of people interested in Spiritualism, which included Caroline de Barrau. In 1887 Gibier published Le spiritisme (fakirisme occidental), a critical and experimental study that included discussion of mediums, North American Indians and Hindu Fakirs. In this book, in which he claimed to be scientifically impartial and apparently reported experiments objectively, he indulged in violently anti-Catholic views. In 1889 Gibier published his Physiologie transcendantale: Analyse des choses in which he described his research into psychological physiology, including careful studies of hypotism, telepathy, duplication and so on.
Gibier was sent by the French government to study yellow fever in Florida and Havana. He hoped to find the yellow fever microbe that had been reported by Dr. Domingos José Freire of the Rio de Janeiro faculty of medicine. He reached Havana in November 1887, but was unable to find the micro-organisms in the blood of victims that had been reported by Freire. Gibier did find a bacillus in the intestine of a victim that seemed a possible cause of the disease, but further tests did not confirm this. He traveled from Havana to Florida by way of New York due to quarantine regulations. He settled in New York in 1889.
In 1890 Gibier founded the Pasteur Institute in New York for inoculation of people who had been bitten by rabid animals. The institute, headed by Paul Gibier and with Dr. C. Van Schaick as assistant and Dr. A. Liautard as consulting veterinarian, opened on 18 February 1890. In the year that followed 828 people went for treatment, of whom 643 were found to not be rabid. 185 were inoculated, of whom none died. Those who could not afford to pay were treated free.
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