To See With a Better Eye

by Duffin, Jacalyn

• ISBN13: 9780691037080
• ISBN10: 0691037086
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-03-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec (1781-1826) is best known for his invention of the stethoscope, one of medicine's most powerful symbols. Histories, novels, and films have cloaked his life in hagiography and legend. Jacalyn Duffin's fascinating new biography relies on a vastly expanded foundation of primary source material, including thousands of pages of handwritten patient records, lecture notes, unpublished essays, and letters. She situates Laennec, the scientist and teacher, within the broader social and intellectual currents of post-Revolutionary France. Her work uncovers a complex character who participated actively in the dramatic changes of his time.Laennec's famous Treatise on Mediate Auscultation was his only published book, but two lesser known works were left in manuscript: an early treatise on pathological anatomy and a later set of lectures on disease. The three parts of Duffin's biography correspond to these books. First, she examines Laennec's student research on the emerging science of pathological anatomy, the background for his major achievement. Second, she uses his clinical records to trace the discovery and development of "mediate auscultation" (listening through an instrument, or mediator, to sounds within the human body). The stethoscope allowed clinicians to "see" the organic alterations inside their living patients' bodies. Finally, she explores the impact of auscultation on diagnostic practice and on concepts of disease. Analyzed here for the first time in their entirety, Laennec's Collège de France lectures reveal his criticism of over-enthusiastic extrapolations of his own method at the expense of the patient's story.

Table of Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS	xi	(2)
LIST OF TABLES	xiii	(2)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	xv
INTRODUCTION	3	(6)
PART ONE: PATHOLOGY: ANATOMY, PHYSIOLOGY, AND THE BODY POLITIC	9	(110)
CHAPTER ONE Youth and Revolution	11	(13)
CHAPTER TWO Student in the Paris School	24	(30)
CHAPTER THREE Research and Academic Aspirations	54	(23)
CHAPTER FOUR Clinical Practice, Clinical Physiology	77	(25)
CHAPTER FIVE The Restoration: Politics, Hospitals, and Patients	102	(17)
PART TWO: AUSCULTATION	119	(88)
CHAPTER SIX The Discovery	121	(30)
CHAPTER SEVEN The Treatise on Mediate Auscultation: The Lungs	151	(23)
CHAPTER EIGHT The Treatise on Mediate Auscultation: The Heart and Clinical Reasoning	174	(33)
PART THREE: DISEASE	207	(98)
CHAPTER NINE Reception and Impact of Auscultation: Reviews, Diagnoses, and Broussais	209	(31)
CHAPTER TEN Return to Paris: Elite Practice and Professor in the Clinic	240	(19)
CHAPTER ELEVEN At the College de France: The Second Unpublished Book	259	(27)
CHAPTER TWELVE Between the Quick and the Dead: Pathology, Physiology, and Clinical Medicine	286	(19)
APPENDIX A A Note on Sources: Scientific Papers and Correspondence	305	(6)
APPENDIX B Laennec's Finances	311	(3)
APPENDIX C Patients in the Two Editions of the Traite de Pauscultation	314	(10)
APPENDIX D Laennec's Network: A Glossary of Frequently Cited Names	324	(4)
APPENDIX E The Family of R. T. H. Laennec	328	(1)
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS	329	(4)
NOTES	333	(64)
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF R. T. H. LAENNEC: PUBLICATIONS, REVIEWS, AND OTHER PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES	397	(10)
BIBLIOGRAPHY	407	(30)
INDEX	437