Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 373

FELIX PLATTER (1536-1614) Observationum, in hominis affectibus pleris[que], corpori [et] animo, functionum laesione, dolore, aliáve molestiâ [et] vitio incommodantibus, libri tres. Impensis Lucovici Kónig, Typis Conradi Waldkirchii 1614 [48] 845 pp. 18.2 cm.

For more information on this author or work, see number: 372

Platter was city physician and professor of medicine at Basel for more than forty years, where he achieved enormous success as a teacher and practitioner. Students from throughout Europe filled his lecture room and he was in continuous demand for consultations. As city physician, Platter was also responsible for all Basel hospitals as well as director of public health. During the plague epidemic in 1563-64, he showed great courage by remaining in Basel to supervise care for the afflicted while many of his fellow physicians fled in panic. He did the same thing on four later occasions when the plague struck his city. Platter prepared the present work very late in his career and drew fully upon his many years of experience in the practice of medicine. The book covers a wide range of medical topics and contains many clinical descriptions of diseases and their causes. He also discussed mental illnesses and made one of the first attempts at classifying the psychoses. Platter believed that most mental diseases were caused by some sort of brain damage or other natural causes. It is in this work that the first known case of infant death from hypertrophy of the thymus is reported as well as an early description of a meningioma (see Garrison-Morton 4511.1). The work also contains the first mention of the thickening of the palmar fascia which results in retraction of the fingers and later was called Dupuytren's contracture.

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 3789; Osler 3693; Waller 7505; Wellcome 5089

Gift of John Martin, M.D.