A TREATISE ON THE DISEASES OF THE CHEST AND ON MEDIATE ASCULTATION, By R. T. H. Laennec, M. D. Regius Professor of Medicine in the College of France, Clinical Professor to the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, etc.etc.etc. Translated from the latest French edition, with copious notes and a sketch of the author's life, by John Forbes, M. D. F.R.S. Member of the Royal College of Physicians, Physician to the Chichester Infirmary, and Physician in Ordinary to his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge. From the Fourth London Edition, considerably enlarged and improved, with many additional notes and an extensive bibliography of the different diseases. With Plates.

8vo. 5.75 x 9.25 inches. frontis. + xliv + 675 pp. + [1] advertisements. Illustrated by 2 plates, with plate II facing the title, as directed in notice to binder, and plate I at end. Includes dedication to James Clark, M D., F.R.S., translator's prefaces to three editions, and his life of the author. Rebound in recent quarter cloth, with marbled boards and new endpapers; spine decorated gilt, with morocco label, gilt. Slight wear to extremities. Title page loose at inside edge. Edges browned, foxing throughout, largely confined to margins. Otherwise fine condition. An authoritative study of chest diseases by the French inventor of the stethoscope. The first section describes traditional methods of examination of the chest and the later development of the percussion method (Auenbrugger, 1761) and Laennec's new technique of mediate auscultation, made possible by his stethoscope. The greater part of the book examines diseases of the bronchi, lungs, pleura and the heart and circulation, including forty-nine case studies (abbreviated by the translator). Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec (1781-1826) was a native of Quimper, Brittany, who studied medicine at Nantes and Paris. In 1816 he had the idea of using a tube to listen to the sound of the patient's heart and lungs. His first stethoscope, as he termed his new invention, was a roll of stiff paper, but this was replaced by a wooden tube, as illustrated in plate I of this work (the modern binaural stethoscope was developed in 1851). His results were published in his Traite de l'Auscultation Mediate (1819), followed by the important revised 2nd edition in 1826, 'the most important treatise on diseases of the thoracic organs ever written' (Garrison); 'He virtually created the modern science of the respiratory organs and their diseases' (PMM). Laennec's translator, John Forbes (1787-1861) and his dedicatee, James Clark (1788-1870), were both Scottish physicians, with careers that paralleled each other in many respects. They were school fellows together, both studied in Aberdeen, served as naval surgeons, graduated MD at Edinburgh on the same day in 1817 and later served as royal physicians. Clark observed Laennec's methods at the Hopital Neckar in Paris and urged Forbes to translate the latter's book of 1819. The first English version subsequently appeared in 1821, with the second and third editions, following the author's own extensive revisions, in 1827 and 1829. This copy, published in Philadelphia, followed the fourth London edition of 1834. Later English editions appeared in 1838 and 1846. Handsomely rebound copy of this important medical treatise, complete with plates of the first stethoscopes. NATURAL HISTORY/SCIENCE MEDICINE MEDICINE 19TH CENTURY NATURAL HISTORY/SCIENCE. …