Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1777

CASIMIR JOSEPH DAVAINE (1812-1882) Traité des entozoaires et des maladies vermineuses de l'homme et des animaux domestiques. J.-B. Baillière et Fils 1860 xix [1] xcii, 838 pp., 88 illus. 21.4 cm.

Davaine not only contributed greatly to the growing knowledge in the field of bacteriology, but was the leading parasitologist in Europe in his day. Russell L. Cecil and Robert F. Loeb in the tenth edition of their Textbook of Medicine (Philadelphia, 1959) commented that Davaine "showed that anthrax is caused by a living organism that multiplies in the body, invades the blood stream and produces death by septicemia. He found the same organism in the malignant pustle, establishing the etiology of the disease in man and animals. Final proof of the causative role of Bacillus anthracis was furnished when R. Koch (1877) described the formation of spores, cultivation of the organism in vitro, reproduction of the disease by injection of pure cultures, and recovery of the bacillus at autopsy. The study of anthrax established for the first time the specific relationship of a microbe to an infectious disease" (p. 240). This work is an extensive treatise on the anatomical features of the various entozoa which may infest the bodies of both man and animals. Discussed are the pathology, symptoms, and organic changes produced by protozoa, cestoda, trematoda, acanthocephala, nematoda, and the various forms of the filaria.

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 2451; Waller 2302

Gift of John Martin, M.D.