Contributed by Maha Ahmed, MD (cand)

On May 30, 1816, Dr. Marc Antoine Louis Félix Giraud-Teulon was born to  Marc Antoine Marguerite Félix Giraud and Nancy Casmir in La Rochelle, France. Dr. Giraud-Teulon’s diverse professional career began with his enrollment at the “École Polytechnique''. Upon his graduation in 1838, he worked as a Government Civil Engineer undertaking several projects aimed at improving roads and canals in France.[1] A man of many ambitions and talents, Dr. Giraud-Teulon did not remain in this role for very long and at the age of 35, he was enticed into a career in medicine, and he enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine in Montpellier. However, his career in medicine was interrupted in 1848 when he was appointed as a Prefect of Haute-Alps and Ardeche. After working as a Prefect of the 11th Republic of France for three years, conflicts with Napoleon III again caused Dr. Giraud-Teulon to shift careers and he once again turned to medicine in 1851, working as a General Practitioner in Nice for four years. In 1856, Dr. Giraud-Teulon moved back to Paris, and this is when his enormous contributions to the field of ophthalmology began.[1]

Today, Dr. Giraud-Teulon is best known in the field for his invention of the binocular ophthalmoscope. Incorporating his engineering background into medicine, Dr. Giraud-Teulon made the first known attempt to view the fundus stereoscopically by devising an instrument with rhomboid prisms, concave mirrors, condensing lenses, and oil lamps for illumination.[2] This hand-held ophthalmoscope had some shortcomings which Dr. Giraud-Teulon attempted to improve. First, the inter-pupillary distance was fixed on the instrument. This problem was addressed in Dr. Giraud-Teulon’s second model of the binocular ophthalmoscope by dividing the right-hand prism, allowing the end section to move in and out with a handle on a screw thread.[2] This adjustment allowed for the accommodation of different inter-pupillary settings.[2] The second major drawback of this rudimentary ophthalmoscope was the lack of adequate illumination. Dr. Giraud-Teulon attempted to address this problem by incorporating an incandescent lamp into the instrument creating the first self-illuminating ophthalmoscope, though at the time, incandescent lamps were still novel and had poor outputs and short half-lives.[2] Despite the improvements that Dr. Giraud-Teulon made to his invention, hand-held binocular ophthalmoscopes did not gain much popularity and their use remained limited in the 1800s.[2]

Throughout his life, Dr. Giraud-Teulon endeavored to make improvements to the world around him, and although his binocular ophthalmoscope proved to be too cumbersome for practical use, his innovative invention was a tremendous advancement in the field. In addition to his contributions to science and medicine, Dr. Giraud-Teulon’s work in ophthalmology also made an enormous impact on the lives of those around him. Residing in Saint-Germain in 1874 until his death on August 19, 1887, Dr. Giraud-Teulon provided free eye care to those who could not afford it each morning before he began work in his own private clinic.[2] From civil engineering to public prefect and finally, to medicine, Dr. Giraud Teulon’s path to medicine was not direct, however, his impact on the field is everlasting.

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