Louis Pierre Charles Alexandre Translated (2 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First American Edition. 2 volumes handsomely rebacked with black calf spines over original publisher's green pebbled cloth. Gilt decoration & lettering on spines. Text tight & intact. [xxii, 395pp]. [xi, 462pp]. Light foxing especially on first & last few pages. Corners & edges rubbed. Original spine from vol #2 laid-in. The author, Louis, was a French clinician and pathologist known for his studies on tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and pneumonia, as well as for the development of medical epidemiology and the clinical trial. Louis taught at the Hotel-Dieu and the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr was one of his students. Medical; Large 8vo 9" - 10" tall; 857 pages.

First English edition. 8vo. 5.5 x 8.75 inches. li + [i] + 388 pp. Half-title. Bound in original half morocco, with marbled boards and gilt rules on spine. Slight wear to extremities and small section of page missing from lower corner of xxxv, not affecting text. Otherwise fine condition. Library stamp of Medical Society Edinburgh on title page and bookplate of Royal College of Pathologists. A pioneering work on medical pathology, based on the clinical observation of fifty-one patients who died of phthisis (tuberculosis) in hospital in Paris. The first two sections provide autopsy reports followed by analysis of clinical features, including non-pulmonary lesions. Two final chapters examine causes (with interesting observations on occupational factors) and treatment. Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis (1787-1872) graduated in his medical exams in Paris in 1813 and spent the next seven years practising in Russia, before returning to France as a hospital consultant in Paris. He is regarded as the founder of statistical and observational methods in clinical medicine, based on the careful collection and analysis of patient data. Louis founded the Societe d'Observation Medicale, for the promotion of evidence based medicine. He considered the common practice of bloodletting to be ineffective as a treatment and published observations on yellow fever and typhoid. (a disease which he named, being the first to establish its pathological nature). Louis's books were also published in Boston and his methods were highly regarded by east coast physicians. This English edition is a translation of his Recherches anatomico-pathologique sur la phthisie of 1825. His translator, Dr Charles Cowan (c.1806-1868) of Bath, studied under Dr Louis in Paris (see his introduction). NATURAL HISTORY/SCIENCE MEDICINE MEDICINE 19TH CENTURY NATURAL HISTORY/SCIENCE Garrison. Morton 3221 (for the first edition, Paris 1825).