Histoire des sciences medicales最新文献

Tronchin's main importance lies in his contribution to personal hygiene, more than to pioneering research. He was an industrious promotor of the inoculations of smallpox against all opposition offered by conservative physicians politicians and theologists. As an inoculator he was most successful in France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. He always tried to suppress malpractice committed by his colleagues and never ran away from conflicts.

The author presents a booklet dating back to 1621 printed in Rome, the work of a preacher, brother Abraham Bzowski (Bzovius), one of the writers of the famous Annals of Cardinal Baron. He draws up a list of 29 doctors who have been sanctified by the Roman Catholic Church.

A bunch of letters unpublished until to-day and preserved in the collections of the Bibliotheque interuniversitaire de santj in Paris makes it possible to understand the role of Dr. Edouard Toulouse as a psychiatric counsellor among the literary world in Paris, both in vivo and in libris, and this especially concerning the brothers Paul and Victor Margueritte, novelists, essayists and playwrights.

The plot of the Ennemi de la Mort, published in 1908, one year after the death of the author Eugne Le Roy, is briefly presented: in 1820, the young practitioner Daniel Charbonniere, who is of Huguenot origin, comes home to the French "Double"-region in Dordogne. For a while, he is enticed by his cousin Minna de Lege, having saved her life. But, as Charbonniere thinks that their inequality of wealth is a barrier, he disregards her desire, which leads the very devout cousin to marry the nephew of her spiritual adviser. Daniel Charbonniere shows himself a disinterested physician, dedicated to the ill peasants suffering from malaria caused by the waters of the Double marshes. He aims to obtain the dry draining of these pools., With the help of a mayor and a priest, the physician also distributes inoculation against poxes and, otherwise, saves the life of a young lady, who later on becomes his companion. Confronted with charlatanry and the hostility of the landlords owning the pools, Daniel Charbonniere is beaten up by the peasants. Dispossessed by his very embittered cousin Minna, the physician goes to live with his wife and children in a decrepit sheep shelter. The persecutions go on and the peasants, instigated by the clergymen, murder Daniel's wet nurse and profane his ancestor's tombs. He ends his life in loneliness. The character of the physician is then analyzed more thoroughly ; under the aspect of his convictions and his humanistic engagement, in the name of which he doesn't accept any accommodation with a wealth-driven society, Charbonniere appears as a freethinker and a very indulgent practitioner, a scientist and a wholehearted mind shaped by the Enlightenment's spirit. In appendix to this analysis follows the rapid description of a litigation, which occurred in 1862 in the village of Les Riceys (Aube district), about a pool, of which Dr. Gabiot, the physician in charge of the epidemics, struggled to obtain the dry draining, in order to eradicate typhoid fever and dysentery. This practitioner stumbled upon the local public authorities, and, despite the support of the prefect, lost his fight.

In august 1914, at the start of World War I, blood transfusion remains quite infrequent, with rough methods, inaccurate indications and poor results. The direct surgical techniques of arteriovenous anastomosis proved ill-adapted to the emergency conditions of war wounds. Indirect techniques with syringes and storage tubes were frequently limited, and complicated, by blood-clotting. Moreover, despite Landsteiner's discovery of ABC blood groups in 1901, compatibility testing was poorly known and often considered unnecessary. At the beginning of the war, none of the belligerent armies'medical services was specifically organized for blood transfusion. In the early years of the war (1914-1916), blood transfusions remain rare. The first transfusion in the French army was performed by Emile Jeanbrau on 16 October 1914. The main impulse, however, came from surgeons of the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC), who had learned about transfusion from doctors in the United States (Bruce Robertson, Edward Archibald). Transfusions became increasingly frequent, particularly as part of pre-operative preparation in cases of wound shock and hemorrhage. The last years (1917-1918) were marked by the arrival of the American Army in France, with a growing medical influence of American doctors. Oswald Robertson introduced the use of citrated blood in glass bottles, being subsequently called "the first blood banker". Blood transfusion remained throughout the war infrequent and technically imperfect. Wartime, however, by the efforts of some young Canadian and American doctors, was a tremendous opportunity for diffusion and improvement.

Throughout human history, disease-related short stature has represented a source of fascination. Following the recent advances in genetics and molecular biology, several hundreds of possible causes are now to be considered. We present herein a few examples of the diagnosis approach of such cases from art sources (sculptures, paintings or photographs for the most recent periods), associated or not with biographical data, allowing semiological and anthropological analyses. The explored period spans from antic great civilizations to 19th Century Western societies. The palaeopathological diagnosis method is based upon medical approach. It includes a search for possible associated abnormalities and the distinction between proportioned, mainly related to hormonal disorders (particularly growth hormone deficiency), and non-proportioned cases especially associated with genetic skeletal dysplasias. Among this latter category, achondroplasia is the most represented cause of short stature. Other more exceptional etiologies are also reported.

Among the health emergency of World War 1, the one relating to the visual organs injuries is one of the most serious. The use of weapons of new type (grenades, shells, shrapnel) that produce chips that are projected on faces, brings the number of soldiers eye injured to an already impressive quantity at the end of the first year of conflict. This emergency is completely unexpected and it is particularly serious because this kind of trauma was extremely disabling. This situation cause a reaction by French ophthalmologists who start working to improve the organization of assistance, to administer effective treatments and surgery, and even on some issues beyond the medical field (legislation, assistance for war blinds). This article presents the main issues that French ophthalmologists have had to confront with during the Great War and, through this, to question the impact of the First World War on the development of ophthalmology as a medical specialty.

Kusumoto Ine was the first woman to practice Western medicine in Japan. Born in 1827, she will live at a turning point in the history of the country: the end of the Edo period (1600-1868) and the beginning of the Meiji period (1868-1912). Her birth, as mysterious and romantic as the-rest of her existence, has unleashed the imagination of writers, feuilleton, Japanese manga artists, so much so that - in the burgeoning romances more or less vapid who made her today a popular heroine - the search for authentic life data is sometimes difficult. The socio-cultural status of Japan in the nineteenth century - which provides information on the status of women - reveals a much less romantic story, but still as prodigious. In France, where his father, Philipp von Siebold, a German physician, great Traveller and marvelous botanist, is well known, a biography Kusumoto Ine had never yet been made.

The authors explore two heart rhythm troubles described on the occasion of the medical exami- nation of the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei and the French politician Talleyrand. According to modern scientific knowledge, the pathological context of respectively the 17th and 19th c., and the personal medical history of the patients, some retrospective original and objective diagnoses are proposed.

Mediterranean fever or brucellosis was an endemic disease at the beginning of the 20th century in the Mediterranean area. Étienne Burnet, a pastorian researcher, studied this zoonosis in the Pasteur Institute of Tunis between 1920 and 1928 and enhanced our knowledge with various experiences on the genius Brucella, particularly melitensis variety. He developed the so-called Burnet's test or melitine IDR diagnose test. The thermo-agglutination of paramelitensis group, now known as the S forms colonies, led him question the variability of this non-specific character. He showed that thermo-agglutination is associated with specific antigenic properties and is common with other bacteria's species and could be acquired cross over colonies culture... The authors attempt to reconstitute the context of these experiences and to show the actuality of evolutionary Burnet's conception of living micro-organisms.