Nicolas-Gabriel Ansiaux
When the University was created, the Faculty of Medicine benefited from undeniable expertise acquired under the French regime, with Jean-Nicolas Comhaire and Nicolas-Gabriel Ansiaux, who was Rector for the academic year 1821-1822, then a second time in 1830-1831. Nicolas-Gabriel Ansiaux was the father of Nicolas-Joseph Ansiaux, who became Professor of Gynecology in 1828.
Son of physician Nicolas-Antoine-Joseph († 1825), who served the Prince-Bishop (1784) and later the civil hospices of Liège, Nicolas-Gabriel Ansiaux was born in Ciney in 1780. He began his studies at the Collège founded in Liège by Velbrück to replace the Jesuit College, which had been abolished. Here he met his future colleagues and friends Jean-Nicolas Comhaire and Pierre-Joseph Destriveaux.
A close friend of Prince-Bishop Hoensbroeck, he accompanied him into exile in 1794, before returning home to continue his training with his father and other doctors in the city, and to practice as a surgeon. He then attended the École de Médecine in Paris, where he was particularly noted for his theses on Caesarean section. In 1804, together with Comhaire, he conceived the project for a School of Surgery (Saint-Clément), which was opened in Liège in 1806, the year in which he was appointed surgeon-in-chief of the Hôpital de Bavière by the Commission des Hospices Civils. He immediately established the reputation of his school, supplementing its theoretical teaching with practical courses in clinical surgery at the hospital.
Along with Sauveur and Comhaire, he was asked to teach medicine at the University of Liège from 1817. He taught courses in surgical pathology, outpatient clinic and, later, forensic medicine, while twice serving as rector (1821-1822 and 1830-1831). A member of numerous Belgian and foreign learned societies (Jena Mineralogical Society, Paris Linnaean Society, Toulouse and Amsterdam Medical Societies, etc.), he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Würzburg (1819), testifying to the international impact of his research. He died in Liège in 1834, having published numerous works and reports on his teaching subjects. His son Nicolas-Joseph, also a professor of medicine at the University of Liège, would later continue this line of Liège physicians.
