Milestones of Science Books

CORVISART DES MARETS, Jean Nicolas.

Essai sur les maladies et les lésions organiques du coeur et des gros vaisseaux.

Paris: Imprimerie de Migneret, 1806.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002968

8vo (188 x 121 mm). [iii-ix] x-lvi, 484, [2] pp. Including half-title and errata leaf at end. Contemporary half-calf over marbled boards, plain spine decorated and lettered in gilt (slight soiling and rubbing). Text little browned throughout, very minor spotting in places, paper repair to half-title affecting one letter, final gathering repaired at gutter not affecting text, p. lvi with ink corrections in text. Very good copy, collated complete. ----

Norman 518; Heirs of Hippocrates 1126; Garrison-Morton 2737; Waller 2149; Wellcome II, 394; DSB III, p.427. - FIRST EDITION of Corvisart's lecture notes on heart disease, "the first treatise on cardiology" (DSB). Following a rash of plagiarisms by his students Corvisart decided to publish his lecture notes for a course that he had given at the Hopital de la Charite in Paris; he assigned the editing of the notes to C. E. Horeau. Later editions bearing the same title were written by Corvisart himself. He "created cardiac symptomatology and made possibly the differentiation between cardiac and pulmonary disorders. He was first to explain heart failure mechanically and to describe the dyspnoea of effort." (Garrison-M.). Corvisart "distinguished between cardiac hypertrophy and dilation, he divided the clinical course of cardiac failure into three phases, and he showed the relationship between cause and effect in valvular disease and cardiac failure" (Heirs of Hippocrates). Corvisart was personal physician to Napoleon from 1801 until the Bourbon Restoration. His translation of Auenbrugger's great treatise on auscultation, published in 1808, 47 years after the first edition, led to the long overdue acceptance by the medical community of the diagnostic value of chest percussion. - Visit our website for additional images and information.

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