He studied medicine in
Paris, and worked as
interne des hôpitaux at the
Salpêtrière,
Bicêtre,
Hôpital Saint-Louis and the
Pitié. During the
Franco-Prussian War, he served as both a
surgeon and an assistant medical officer. From 1879 to 1905 he was a physician of
pediatric services at Bicêtre. In Paris, he founded a day school for special instruction of children with mental disability. In 1866, during a severe
cholera epidemic in
Amiens, he volunteered his services, and after the siege had passed, was presented with a gold watch as an expression of the city's gratitude. During the
Paris Commune (1871), when revolutionaries wanted to execute their wounded enemies, Bourneville intervened and saved the prisoners' lives. He was elected to the Paris city council in 1876 and to the
French Parliament in 1883, where he served as a deputy until 1889. In both positions he advocated reforms of the health system. As a politician, he spearheaded efforts to train professional, secular nurses to replace the religious sisters who staffed most of the nation's hospitals at the time. In 1880, he provided an early description of a multi-symptom disorder that was to become known as "Bourneville's syndrome", now known as
tuberous sclerosis. This genetic condition may lead to intellectual disability,
epilepsy, a disfiguring
facial rash and benign tumors in the brain, heart,
kidney and other organs. The condition was also studied by the British
dermatologist,
John James Pringle (1855–1922), leading some historical texts to refer to it as "Bourneville-Pringle disease". Bourneville published works which stated that
saints claiming to produce
miracles or
stigmata, and those claiming to be
possessed were actually suffering from
epilepsy or
hysteria. Bourneville was skeptical of
mystical and
supernatural claims. Between 1882 and 1902, he published a series of volumes known as
La Bibliothèque Diabolique, in these he re-evaluated historical cases of possession and
witchcraft in favor for pathological explanations. == Writings ==