Jean-Nicolas Corvisart

Baron Jean-Nicolas Corvisart

Jean-Nicolas Corvisart des Marets - also Jean Nicolas Baron Corvisart-Desmaret - (born February 15, 1755 in Dricourt / Champagne , today in the Ardennes department ; † September 18, 1821 in Courbevoie , Hauts-de-Seine department ) was an important French Physician, cardiologist and, among other things, personal physician to Napoléon Bonaparte . Alongside Philippe Pinel and Francois Xavier Bichat, Corvisart des Marets is one of the most important representatives of the Parisian clinical school of medicine.

biography

Corvisart received early instruction in Latin and French from an uncle who was a priest. At the age of twelve he attended the Collège Sainte-Barbe. His father would have liked to see the young Corvisart continue his law studies, which he began in Paris , but after a crucial meeting with the famous doctor Antoine Petit (1722–1794; le seul docteur de Paris qui sache opérer et accoucher ) he preferred the medicine . Since his father cut his financial support, he became a nursing assistant at the Hôpital-Dieu in Paris . There he showed so much enthusiasm that his parents decided to allow him to study medicine at the École de médecine in Paris.

He studied with the most famous names of the time ( Pierre-Joseph Desault , Félix Vicq d'Azyr , Antoine Petit , Louis Desbois de Rochefort ). On November 14, 1782 he was awarded the title of docteur-régent . Because he refused to wear the wig , he was refused a job as a doctor at the Hôpital des Paroisses and he accepted a job in a hospital for the poor in the Saint-Sulpice community.

In 1788 he succeeded Debois de Rochefort as chief physician at the Hospice de la Charité , where he introduced some far-reaching reforms.

The French Revolution (1792) stopped teaching medicine and the number of charlatans increased . At the end of 1794, increasingly regulated courses were set up again. In 1795 the new École de Santé was founded in Paris and Corvisart was given the chair of internal medicine . Within a short time the Paris School became one of the most important in Europe.

His main interest was cardiology , he refined the corresponding diagnostics , for example cardiac auscultation . In his teaching activities, too, he attached great importance to a systematic and careful investigation that employs all the senses. Corvisart reactivated the percussion method for diagnosing breast diseases that had already been discovered by Johann Leopold Auenbrugger .

In the first years of the 19th century he won the trust of Napoléon and Joséphine and from 1804 became their personal physician. Napoleon was fascinated by his calm manner and his reliable diagnosis and is said to have made the following quote: "I don't believe in medicine, but I believe in Corvisart". He also made him a knight of the Legion of Honor, which had only been established two years earlier (1804). Corvisart accompanied Napoleon to Italy in 1805 and to Austria in 1809 . In 1808 he was appointed Baron d'Empire and received a salary of 10,000 francs. He also treated Joséphine and diagnosed her sterility. Since she asked more and more for the pills he had prescribed, he gave her a placebo : white bread balls wrapped in silver paper.

Corvisart's successor as médecin d'hôpital at the Charité was his pupil in 1805, the clinician Gaspard-Laurent Bayle (1774–1816), who was considered an excellent practitioner and also became the leading theoretician of the pathological-anatomical Paris school .

Corvisart's most important work is Essai sur les maladies et les lésions organiques du cœur et des gros vaisseaux (on diseases and organic lesions of the heart and large vessels), which appeared in 1806. In 1808 he translated Leopold Auenbrugger's book about percussion and made this work very famous.

In 1811 he got a seat in the Académie des Sciences . In the same year he was elected a foreign member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . In 1820 he became a member of the Académie de médecine .

Corvisart died on September 18, 1821 in Courbevoie near Paris after several strokes , only a few months after the death of Napoleon on Saint Helena . He was buried in the cemetery of Athis-Mons near Paris. In Paris, a street and a metro station are named after him.

Fonts

with Louis Desbois de Rochefort: Cours élémentaire de matière médicale: suivi d'un précis de l'art de formuler. Volume 1. 1793.
with CE Horeau: Essai sur les maladies et les lésions organiques du cœur et des gros vaisseaux. 1806.
New method to reconnaitre the maladies internes de la poitrine par la percussion de cette cavité. 1808. (Translation of Leopold Auenbrugger's book on percussion.)

literature

Marianne Karamanou et al .: Professor Jean-Nicolas Corvisart des Marets (1755-1821): Founder of Modern Cardiology. In: Hellenic Journal of Cardiology. 2010; 51: 290-293. ( online ).
Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Corvisart-Desmaret, Jean Nicolas Baron. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 275 f.

Individual evidence

^ Wolfgang U. Eckart : History of Medicine , 6th edition 2009, Springer Medizin Verlag Heidelberg 2009, on the Paris Clinical School pp. 192–195; History of Medicine Springer Verlag 2009 History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine , Springer Heidelberg Berlin New York 2013, pp. 175–178. History, theory and ethics of medicine Springer Verlag 2013
↑ Wolfgang U. Eckart . Illustrated history of medicine. From the French Revolution to the present , Springer Berlin, Heidelberg 1. + 2. Edition 2011, here: Revolution and Medicine - The arrival of naturwiss. Thinking in Clinic and Laboratory, pp. 33–56, Paris Clinical School, pp. 39–45, Corvisart des Marets, p. 42 Illustrated History of Medicine, Springer Verlag 2011 .
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Xavier Riaud: Jean-Nicolas Corvisart, Physician to the Emperor. Foundation Napoleon, 2008.
^ Wolfgang U. Eckart : Jean Nicolas Corvisart des Marest , in: Wolfgang U. Eckart and Christoph Gradmann: Ärztelexikon. From antiquity to the present , 1st edition 1995 CH Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Munich, 2nd edition 2001, 3rd edition 2006. Medical dictionary 2006, Springer Verlag
^ Wolfgang U. Eckart : Bayle, Gaspard-Laurent. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 156.
↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 62.

personal data
SURNAME	Corvisart, Jean-Nicolas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Corvisart des Marets, Jean-Nicolas Baron (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French physician and personal physician to Napoleon Bonaparte
DATE OF BIRTH	February 15, 1755
PLACE OF BIRTH	Dricourt ( Ardennes department )
DATE OF DEATH	September 18, 1821
Place of death	Courbevoie ( Hauts-de-Seine department )

[1] Wolfgang U. Eckart : History of Medicine , 6th edition 2009, Springer Medizin Verlag Heidelberg 2009, on the Paris Clinical School pp. 192–195; History of Medicine Springer Verlag 2009 History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine , Springer Heidelberg Berlin New York 2013, pp. 175–178. History, theory and ethics of medicine Springer Verlag 2013

[2] Wolfgang U. Eckart . Illustrated history of medicine. From the French Revolution to the present , Springer Berlin, Heidelberg 1. + 2. Edition 2011, here: Revolution and Medicine - The arrival of naturwiss. Thinking in Clinic and Laboratory, pp. 33–56, Paris Clinical School, pp. 39–45, Corvisart des Marets, p. 42 Illustrated History of Medicine, Springer Verlag 2011 .

[FN-3] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Xavier Riaud: Jean-Nicolas Corvisart, Physician to the Emperor. Foundation Napoleon, 2008.

[4] Wolfgang U. Eckart : Jean Nicolas Corvisart des Marest , in: Wolfgang U. Eckart and Christoph Gradmann: Ärztelexikon. From antiquity to the present , 1st edition 1995 CH Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Munich, 2nd edition 2001, 3rd edition 2006. Medical dictionary 2006, Springer Verlag

[5] Wolfgang U. Eckart : Bayle, Gaspard-Laurent. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 156.

[6] Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 62.