Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1936

JULES BERNARD LUYS (1828-1897) Doit-on admettre une fièvre puerpérale? Schiller 1860 32 pp. 26.4 cm.

A native of Paris, Luys obtained his medical degree in 1857, with a thesis on the pathology of tuberculosis. In 1860 he presented this thesis on puerperal fever to qualify for staff and teaching privileges in the hospitals of Paris. In 1863, he became physician at the Salpêtrière and the Maison de santé zu Ivry. Although he studied and taught about mental illnesses, Luys also pursued his interests in functional neuroanatomy and became recognized as one of the foremost neurologists and neuroanatomists in France. Luys selected the topic of childbed fever for this important thesis, presumably because it was then a subject of great interest and concern. He states flatly that there is no reason to believe that the fever, peritonitis, pelvic venous thrombosis, tissue necrosis, and the other terrifying signs of this condition deserve a special nosologic identity. Luys denies that puerperal fever is carried from patient to patient by doctors and attendants, even though he was aware that there were those who believe that it is spread in that way. The following year Semmelweis published his epochal work on the subject (see No. 1851) showing Luys to be wrong.

See Related Record(s): 1851

Gift of John Martin, M.D.