Auguste Ambroise Tardieu

Auguste Tardieu

Auguste Ambroise Tardieu (1818 -1879) The foremost French toxicologist and forensic medical expert of the mid-19th century. He was involved as expert evidence in some of the most notorious murder cases in the history of France. Tardieu was the first to write on child sexual abuse, which he classified as a type of physical assault. Battered child syndrome, now widely recognized, is also known as Tardieu's syndrome in his honor. Tardieu's ecchymosis, subpleural spots of ecchymosis that follow the death of a new born child by strangulation or suffocation, were first described by him in 1859. Besides being an expert in legal medicine, Tardieu also wrote about the terrible working conditions of children in mines and factories, which had a great positive impact in bring about much needed change.