[Raoul Palmer and the coelio-surgical adventure from 1940 to 1995]

Raoul Palmer born in Paris in 1904 from Swedish parents with a humanistic tradition and a non-conformist spirit obtained a scientific degree (licence ès-sciences) before starting his medical studies. Attracted by experimental surgery he was at the head of Fiessinger's laboratory before becoming demonstrator of gynecology at the Hôpital Broca in the services of Proust, Brocq, Macquot, Funck-Brentano and Huguier. As a surgeon specialized in sterility since 1935 but conscient as to the difficulty of making a prognosis without being informed of the extent of the lesions, he invented pre-operatory exploratory coelioscopy in 1943. This new technique allowed him to go further with the sampling of ovocytes, electrocoagulation of the uterine horns, punction of cysts, adhesiolysis ... And this was only a beginning for this method practised for the first time in 1901 by Kelling in the dog and by Jacobaeus (1912) in man but which remained confidential. In spite of neighbouring hostility, Palmer's disciples have widened the limits of this method: digestive adhesiolysis, appendectomy in 1983. In 1987 Philippe Mouret realized the first cholecystectomy and opened the way to more complex surgical operations so much that some surgeons wonder if laparotomy is still to be performed to-day. With a premonitory will, Palmer has fought all along his medical career against clandestine abortion while advising in spite of the Ordre des Médecins the legalization of voluntary pregnancy and freedom for voluntary sterilization. With over 800 international publications he appears as a visionary creator and a militating humanist.