Name Maurice Villaret Children Bernard Villaret | Died 1946, Paris, France | |
Parents Alexandre Villaret, Catherine Julie Albert | ||
Maurice Villaret (7 September 1877 – 25 January 1946) was a French neurologist born in Paris.
In 1906 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Paris. In 1919 he became medecin des hopitaux in Paris, and subsequently served as medecin chef at the Hopital Necker. In 1927 he became a professor of hydrotherapy and climatology, and in 1939 was appointed clinical professor at the Hopital Broussais.
He is remembered for his studies and experiments involving precision localization of vascular lesions of the brain. In 1917 he described what was to become known as "Villaret's syndrome". This syndrome is characterized by an ipsilateral paralysis of cranial nerve numbers IX, X, XI, XII, and sometimes cranial nerve number VII. It may also involve the cervical ganglia of the sympathetic trunk. Paralysis is caused by a lesion in the posterior retroparotid space.
With his mentor Augustin Nicolas Gilbert (1858-1927), Villaret performed extensive research involving the physiology of the portal venous system, and had particular interest in the causes of portal hypertension. He also undertook several pathological studies of cirrhosis.