Louis Vaillant

{{Short description|French army doctor, naturalist and explorer}} thumb|Louis Vaillant '''Louis Vaillant''' (full name '''Louis Auguste André Marie Vaillant''')<ref>{{cite book|author=Svetlana Gorshenina|author-link=Svetlana Gorshenina|title=Explorateurs en Asie Centrale: voyageurs et aventuriers de Marco Polo à Ella Maillart|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_5F4qC_wrqIC&pg=PA244|accessdate=24 October 2012|year=2003|publisher=Editions Olizane|isbn=978-2-88086-295-4|page=244}}</ref> (26 November 1876 – 1963)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://gw.geneanet.org/garric?lang=fr&p=leon+louis&n=vaillant|title = Généalogie de Léon Louis VAILLANT}}</ref> was a French army doctor, naturalist, and explorer. He was the second son of Léon Louis Vaillant, professor of zoology at the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris.<ref name="Zoo">{{in lang|fr}} ''Bulletin de la Société zoologique de France'' vol. 39 (1914), pp. 363, 365; [https://archive.org/stream/bulletindelasoci39soci#page/362/mode/2up archive.org.]</ref>

==Life== He upheld a medical thesis at Bordeaux in 1902 on damage to internal organs caused by snake venom.<ref>''Catalogue des thèses de doctorat soutenues devant les universités françaises'' (1904), column 350; [https://archive.org/stream/cataloguedesths00techgoog#page/n191/mode/2up archive.org.]</ref>

Vaillant travelled with Paul Pelliot and the photographer Charles Nouette on Pelliot's archaeological expedition to Eastern ("Chinese") Turkestan, modern Xinjiang, in 1906–1908. He was the expedition's doctor and also naturalist,<ref name="Zoo"/> acting on behalf of the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle; progress was reported in the ''Bulletin'' of the museum by his father.<ref>{{in lang|fr}} ''Bulletin du Muséum national d'histoire naturelle'' vol. 14 (1908), p. 2; [https://archive.org/stream/bulletindumusumn14musu#page/2/mode/2up archive.org.]</ref> This Pelliot–Valliant expedition was a successor to that of Jules-Léon Dutreuil de Rhins and Fernand Grenard of the 1890s.<ref>{{cite book|author=Philippe Forêt|title=La véritable histoire d'une montagne plus grande que l'Himalaya: les résultats scientifiques inattendus d'un voyage au Tibet, 1906-1908, et de la querelle du Transhimalaya|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-ZdkeOOXb3UC&pg=PA64|accessdate=24 October 2012|year=2004|publisher=Philippe Foret|isbn=978-2-7495-0346-2|page=64|language=fr}}</ref>

The expedition left St Petersburg on 17 June 1906 and proceeded via Bokhara, Kashgar, Ürümqi and Turfan, before reaching Peking in the summer of 1909.

In March 1908 the expedition visited Dunhuang, where numerous cave manuscripts were purchased and subsequently studied by Pelliot. The manuscripts are now kept at the National Library of France, the Bibliothèque nationale.

Vaillant served in two military campaigns in Tonkin. He was decorated for military service with the Légion d'honneur on 28 December 1922.<ref name="Zoo"/>

==Works== In 1910 Vaillant published an account of the expedition in ''Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris''.<ref>http://www.guimet.fr/fr/publications/autres-ouvrages Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris, 1910, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 8-17</ref> He later published on the ethnography of the Mong Cai region, now in Vietnam.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Grant Evans|author2=Chris Hutton|author3=Kuah Khun Eng|title=Where China Meets Southeast Asia: Social and Cultural Change in the Border Region|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zXuTVmpwyMQC&pg=PA261|accessdate=24 October 2012|date=18 November 2000|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=978-0-312-23634-2|page=261}}</ref>

== See also == *Mocquard, M.F. (1910) ''Voyage de M. le D Louis Vaillant dans l'Asie centrale (Mission Pelliot) Reptiles et batrachiens'' Bull. Mus. Nat. Hist. Nat. Paris 3:145-153 [http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Eremias&species=przewalskii] (nb link does not retrieve - 25.10.2012)

== References == {{Reflist}}

== External links == *[http://www.persee.fr/articleAsPDF/bmsap_0037-8984_1910_num_1_1_7105/article_bmsap_0037-8984_1910_num_1_1_7105.pdf] Downloadable .pdf file of Vaillant's report in Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vaillant, Louis}} Category:1876 births Category:French military doctors Category:1963 deaths