Philippe Ricord (1800-1889), French surgeon and venerologist. Ricord was born in Baltimore, USA, to French parents. He studied medicine in Philadelphia before travelling to France in 1820. In 1831, he was appointed surgeon in chief at the hospital for venereal diseases at the Hopital du Midi in Paris, where he worked for the next thirty years. In 1838, Ricord demonstrated conclusively that syphilis and gonorrhea were separate diseases. He also proposed the system of classifying syphilis into primary, secondary and tertiary stages that is still in use today. In 1862, Ricord was appointed physician to Napoleon III.