Joseph-Auguste Fontaine: A martyr of compressed air therapy

The Historical Cover Note by Featherstone and Ball in the May 2021 issue of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care was, as usual, a brilliant synthesis of the impact of the therapeutic use of air under hyperbaric pressure. ¹

We would like to highlight the fact that the experimental or clinical use of compressed air machines could pose a risk to their inventors as demonstrated by the traumatic accident suffered by Joseph-Auguste Fontaine. Dr Fontaine (23 December 1835–31 October 1886) as reported in the Cover Note, was the director of the Etablissement d'aérothérapie located at Rue de Chateaudun Nr 53 in Paris IX^e from 1874 (figure 1).

Figure 1.

Woodcut by Perot depicting the aerotherapy establishment of Dr Fontaine. From: Bert P. Anesthésie par le protoxyde d’azote. In: Revues Scientifiques du journal ‘La République française’. Paris: Masson, 1880, fig. 35, p.319. Reproduced under open licence from the Collection BIU Santé Médecine (Paris). Available from https://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histmed/image?09374

Fontaine's house was at Rue de la Victoire Nr 64, parallel to the Rue de Chateaudun Nr 63 where he received his patients for their cure or baths of compressed air. In 1877, the activity of the institute was advertised in newspapers such as La Gazette des Touristes ² :

Etablissement d’aérothérapie, dirigé par le D^r Fontaine, 58, rue de Châteaudun – Bains d’air comprimé, respirations d’air comprimé ou rarefié, appareils de Waldenburg, asthme, brinchite chronique, emphysème, coqueluche, chlorose, anémie, anervie, diabète, surdité catarrhale.

On 31 October 1886, a problem of low pressure occurred in the cabins. The pressure-generating machines were in the basement and, as reported in the newspapers the next day, Fontaine went down, alone, to investigate the problem. A bit later, a huge deflagration was heard upstairs. A servant and Dr Fontaine’s associate, M. Horteloup, rushed to the basement where they found their boss, his chest crushed by a heavy lever. Death was instantaneous. Nobody could explain what happened, as Dr Fontaine was the only one who knew how the machines worked. A notice in La Lanterne read ³ :

A trois heures de l’après-midi, hier, M. Joseph-Auguste Fontaine, docteur-médecin, rue de la Victoire, 64, essayait dans sa cave une machine hydraulique, destinée à produire l’air comprimé et dont il est l’inventeur. Un levier de cette machine s’est si violemment abattu sur la poitrine de M. Fontaine, que ce dernier a été tué sur le coup.

Le corps a été remonté à son domicile.

M. Fontaine était seul dans sa cave moment de cette experience.

Fontaine rests in the cemetery of Saint-Ouen, located just north of Montmartre, near Paris.