Lucien Baudens

He was born in Aire-sur-la-Lys in the northern France from Jean-Louis Baudens, sheet merchant, and Marie-Adélaïde Baelen[1] at the end of the Consulate and one month before the First Empire of Napoleon (18 May 1804).

After studying medicine at the French Defence Health service of the University of Strasbourg, then in Paris (Val-de-Grâce military hospital), he was granted his M.D.

[2] He participated to the French conquest of Algeria from the invasion of Algiers in 1830, then of Constantine, Médéa, Mascara, Tlemcen, Milianah with the general Pierre Berthezène.

[5] In 1853, in the French Academy of Sciences, he laid out the basic principles and rules of conduct that ensure good use of chloroform and considered this drug as the most effective and successful in military surgery.

[7] He was impressed by the work of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, of the Russian Sisters of the Exaltation of the Cross and specially of Florence Nightingale.