Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1564

JEAN BAPTISTE BOUILLAUD (1796-1881) Essai sur la philosophie médicale et sur les généralités de la clinique médicale. Just Rouvier et E. Le Bouvier 1836 xii, 426 [1] pp., tables. 19.8 cm.

For more information on this author or work, see number: 1561

Bouillaud expressed his reason for preparing this book in the opening sentence of the Preface: "The essay, which I am submitting to the judgment of the public, had for its essential aim to impress in the study of medicine the quality of precision, without which medicine does not exist as a true science." He begins the first part of the work by summarizing the state of medicine from the time of Hippocrates to the early nineteenth century, including a discussion of the schools of Bichat, Pinel, Magendie, and Broussais as well as Laennec's use of the stethoscope in auscultation. Bouillaud devotes the second part of the work to a critique of the place of observation, experimentation, and reason in medicine. In the final part of the work, he discusses the role of diagnosis in clinical medicine.

Cited references: Waller 1349; Wellcome II, p. 211

Gift of John Martin, M.D.