To See With a Better Eye (ebook)

Argumento de To See With a Better Eye (ebook)

René Théophile 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foundation of primary source material, including thousands of pages of handwritten patient records, lecture notes, unpublished essays, and letters.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 Collége de France lectures reveal his criticism of over-enthusiastic extrapolations of his own method at the expense of the patient's story.

Originally published in 1998.

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Winner of the 2001 Jason A. Hannah Medal of the Royal Society of Canada
One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 19980LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LIST OF TABLES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE: PATHOLOGY: ANATOMY, PHYSIOLOGY, AND THE BODY POLITIC
CHAPTER ONE Youth and Revolution
CHAPTER TWO Student in the Paris School
CHAPTER THREE Research and Academic Aspirations
CHAPTER FOUR Clinical Practice, Clinical Physiology
CHAPTER FIVE The Restoration: Politics, Hospitals, and Patients
PART TWO: AUSCULTATION
CHAPTER SIX The Discovery
CHAPTER SEVEN The Treatise on Mediate
Auscultation: The Lungs
CHAPTER EIGHT The Treatise on Mediate
Auscultation: The Heart and Clinical Reasoning
PART THREE: DISEASE
CHAPTER NINE Reception and Impact of
Auscultation: Reviews, Diagnoses, and Broussais
CHAPTER TEN Return to Paris: Elite Practice
and Professor in the Clinic
CHAPTER ELEVEN At the College de France: The Second Unpublished Book
CHAPTER TWELVE Between the Quick and the
Dead: Pathology, Physiology, and Clinical
Medicine
APPENDIX A A Note on Sources: Scientific
Papers and Correspondence
APPENDIX B Laennec's Finances
APPENDIX C Patients in the Two Editions of the
Traite de Pauscultation
APPENDIX D Laennec's Network: A Glossary of
Frequently Cited Names
APPENDIX E The Family of R. T. H. Laennec
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF R. T. H. LAENNEC: PUBLICATIONS, REVIEWS, AND OTHER PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX