Pierre-Charles-Alexandre Louis (1787 - 1872)

A French doctor at the dawn of scientific medicine

Michel Dubuisson

• Éditeur: Editions L'Harmattan
• Année: 2024
• Édition: 0
• ISBN de l'eBook:
  9782336477985
• Sujet: Histoire
• Sujet: Histoire du monde

Few foreign doctors have had as great an influence as Pierre Charles-Alexandre Louis on the development of American scientific medicine. Many of the American doctors who were at the origin of this movement came to Paris and were his students. On their return, through their writings and translations of his works, they passed on what became one of the foundations of American medical science.
Pierre C-A Louis was practicing in Odessa when an epidemic of croup made him aware of the inadequacy of his medical knowledge. He decided to return to Paris to devote himself entirely to anatomical and clinical research.
His work enabled him to isolate this disease, which he named typhoid fever. Following in Laennec's footsteps, he increased our knowledge of phthisis, which later became tuberculosis. Above all, by carrying out one of the first statistical studies in medicine, he dared to question the usefulness and danger of systematic bloodletting, which had been practiced for centuries without any scientific basis.
Through his ideas and writings, he was the precursor of what, two centuries later, would become "evidence-based medicine".

Table des matières

• Couverture
• 4e de couverture
• Titre
• Copyright
• Exergue
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword by Dr John W K Ward
• Preface to the original French edition
• Introduction
• An austere childhood and adolescence
• Medical studies
• Briefly settled in Paris
• Practitioner attached to Count of Saint-Priest’s court
• Back to Paris
• Five years of obscure work and documentation at the Charite Hospital
• Publication of my work on phthisis
• Stay in Brussels – Preparation of the publication on typhoid
• Publication on typhoid
• Mission to Gibraltar, where yellow fever was rampant
• A new life on my return from Gibraltar
• Controversy with Broussais and day routine in hospital
• Cholera in Paris
• Creation of the Clinical Observation Society
• Family and friends
• Questioning Bloodletting
• Marriage to Zoé Duvidal de Montferrier – Birth of our son Armand
• Life of the Clinical Observation Society
• Debate at the academy
• François Valleix: A collaborator, a great friend
• Typhoid and Typhus: two different diseases
• Death of Nicolas Chervin – Publication on Yellow Fever in Gibraltar
• A happy period of life…
• Illness and death of our only son, Armand. Retirement from my medical activity
• Death of François Valleix
• A new era in medicine
• Visits and news from faithful friends and students
• 1870: the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune
• Death of Dr Louis
• Notes from the author
• Bibliography
• Table of contents
• Adresse