Galvani began original work of a high order very early in his medical career. His graduation thesis with regard to bones, treating specially their formation and development, attracted no little attention and is especially noteworthy because of the breadth of view in it, for it touches on the various questions relative to bones from the standpoint of physics and chemistry as well as medicine and surgery. It was sufficient to obtain for its author the place of lecturer in anatomy in the University of Bologna, besides the post of director of the teaching of anatomy in the Institute of Sciences, a subsidiary institution. From the very beginning his course was popular. Galvani was an easy, interesting talker, and he was one of the first who introduced experimental demonstrations into his lectures.

At this time the science of comparative anatomy was just beginning to attract widespread attention. John Hunter in London was doing a great work in this line which has placed him in the front rank of contributors to biology and collectors of important facts in all the sciences allied to anatomy and physiology. Galvani took up this work with enthusiasm and began the study particularly of birds. These animals, the farthest removed from man of the beings that have warm blood, present by that very fact many interesting contrasts and analogies, which furnish important suggestions for the explanation of difficult problems in human anatomy and physiology.

His experimental work in comparative anatomy, strange as it might appear and apparently not to be expected, led him into the domain of electricity through the observation of certain phenomena of animal electricity and the effect of electrical current on animals.

Like so many other great discoveries in science, his first and most important observations in electrical phenomena {119} were results of an accident. Of course, it is easy to talk of accidents in these cases. The fall of the apple for Newton, Laennec's observation of the little boys tapping on a log in the courtyard of the Louvre, from which he got his idea for the invention of the stethoscope, were apparently merest accidents. Without the inventive scientific genius ready to take advantage of them, however, these accidents would not have been raised to the higher planes of important incidents in history. They would have meant nothing. The phenomena had probably occurred under men's eyes hundreds of times before, but there was no great mind ready to receive the seeds of thought it suggested and go on to follow out the conclusions so obviously indicated. Galvani's observation of the twitching of the muscles of the frog under the influence of electricity may be called one of the happy accidents of scientific development, but it was Galvani's own genius that made the accident happy.

There are two stories told as to the method of the first observation in this matter. Both of them make his wife an important factor in the discovery. According to the more popular form of the history, Galvani was engaged in preparing some frog's legs as a special dainty for his wife, who was ill and who liked this delicacy very much. He thought so much of her that he was doing this himself in the hope that she would be thus more readily tempted to eat them. While so engaged he exposed the large nerve of the animals' hind legs and at the same time split the skin covering the muscles. In doing this he touched the nerve-muscle preparation, as this has come to be called, with the scalpel and little forceps simultaneously, with the result that twitchings occurred. While seeking for the cause of these twitchings the idea of animal electricity came to him.

The other form of the story of his original discovery is not {120} less interesting and is perhaps a little more authentic. One evening he was engaged in his laboratory in making some experiments while some friends and his wife were present. By chance some frogs, the hind legs of which had been stripped of skin, were placed upon the table not far from an apparatus for the generation of frictional electricity. They were not in contact with this apparatus at any point, however, though they were not far distant from the conductor. While the apparatus was being used to produce a series of sparks, a laboratory assistant, without thinking of any possible results, touched with the point of a scalpel the sciatic nerves of one of the animals. Just as soon as he did this all the muscles of this limb went into convulsive movement. It was Galvani's wife who noticed what had happened and who had the assistant use the scalpel once more with the same result.

She was herself a woman of well-developed intellect, and her association with her father and husband made her well acquainted with the anatomy and physiology of the day. She realized that what had occurred was quite out of the ordinary. Accordingly, she called the attention of her husband to the phenomena, and is even said to have suggested their possible connection with the presence and action of the electric apparatus. Husband and wife then together, by means of a series of observations, determined that whenever the apparatus was not in use the phenomenon of the conclusive movements of the frog's legs did not take place, notwithstanding irritation by the scalpel. Whenever the electric apparatus was working, however, then the phenomenon in question always took place. According to either form of the story it is clear that Madame Galvani had an important part in the discovery, and Galvani himself, far from making little of what she had accomplished, was always {121} glad to attribute his discovery, or at least the suggestive hint that led up to it, to his wife.

After these first discoveries on the influence of artificial electricity, nothing seemed more interesting than to investigate whether ordinary atmospheric electricity as manifested in lightning would produce the same effects on muscular movements. In this matter Galvani showed much courage as an inventive genius. He dared to place an atmospheric conductor on the highest point of his house and to this conductor he attached a wire, which ran down to his laboratory. During a storm he suspended on this metallic circuit by means of their sciatic nerves frogs' legs and the legs of other animals prepared for the purpose. To the feet of the animals he attached another wire sufficiently long to reach down to the bottom of a well, thus completing a current to the ground.

All the phenomena took place exactly as if with artificial electricity. Whenever lightning flashed from the clouds the limbs of the animals experimented with underwent violent contractions, which were noticeable before the noise of the thunder, and were, so to say, the signal for it. These contractions took place, although there were no conductors from the muscles, and although the nerve conductors were not isolated. The muscular contractions were greater in proportion than the intensity of the lightning and the proximity of the storm. The phenomena were manifest whether the animal was in the open air or if, for greater convenience, it was enclosed in a room, or even in a vessel. The muscular contractions could even be noticed despite the fact that the nerves were separated somewhat from their conductor, especially whenever the lightning was violent. The sparks would leap over a small gap almost as in the case of artificial electricity, the muscular contraction of the animal {122} being proportioned to the energy and the nearness of the sparks.

It is almost needless to say, these experiments upon the frog were not accomplished in a few days or a few weeks. Galvani had his duties as Professor of Anatomy to attend to, besides the obligations imposed upon him as a busy practitioner of medicine and surgery. At that time it was not nearly so much the custom as it is at present, to use frogs for experiments, with the idea that conclusions might be obtained of value for the biological sciences generally, and especially for medicine. There has always been an undercurrent of feeling that such experiments are more or less a beating of the air. Galvani found opposition not only to his views with regard to animal electricity as enunciated after experimental demonstration, but also met with no little ridicule because of the supposed waste of time at occupations that could not be expected to lead to any practical results. It was the custom among scientific men to laugh somewhat scornfully at his patient persistence in studying out every detail of electrical action on the frog, and one of the supposedly prominent scientists of the time even dubbed him the frog dancing master. This did not, however, deter Galvani from his work, though some of the bitter things must have proved cutting enough, and might have discouraged a smaller man, less confident of the scientific value of the work that he was doing.

There were even phases of physical science quite apart from physiology or animal electricity, which he was able to illustrate by his experiments. He called special attention, for instance, to the fact that the lightning does not excite a single contraction of the muscle as is the case with a spark of artificial electricity, but that there are a series of muscular contractions succeeding one another rapidly in diminishing {123} energy and somewhat corresponding to the reiterated reports of thunder. This was Galvani's expression for the dying away of the electrical influence upon the muscle. He had thus evidently reached a hint of the pendulum-like swing with which electrical equilibrium is restored after its violent disturbance immediately following the lightning stroke. He noted, moreover, that for the production of muscular contractions the absolute appearance of lightning was not indispensable. Muscular twitchings were noted whenever the heavens were overclouded by a storm, or whenever clouds charged with electricity were passed above the conductor.

These experiments were made upon living frogs, as well as upon the separated legs, and in both cases the results obtained were very similar to those observed on the employment of some form of artificial electricity. In some of these observations, Galvani was anticipating ideas that became current truth in electrical science only many years after his time. In his observations upon the effects of lightning, he was forestalling Franklin's works to a certain extent. Both of these great scientists, however, had been anticipated by a clergyman in Austria; whose work attracted very little attention, however, because he was not in touch with the scientific bodies of the day. The demonstration of the identity of ordinary terrestrial artificial electricity and the lightning was in the air, as it were, and many workers, as is usually the case with any great discovery, came very close to it, and deserve at least a portion of the credit for it.

It is almost needless to say, many of these experiments with lightning thus conducted by Galvani were not without an element of serious personal danger. Not long after this time a Russian savant, Richman by name, while repeating Franklin's experiments with the kite, was struck dead by the charge received from his apparatus. Galvani, however, {124} devoted himself only in passing to the physical problems involved, and kept always in view the physiological aspects of the problem of animal electricity; and, accordingly, made a series of most interesting observations on the ray fish or torpedo, as it is sometimes called, the fish which gives electrical shocks. His idea was to demonstrate that the shocks felt when this animal is touched are really due to sparks of electricity similar to those which can be obtained by artificial means. This had never been determined, and Galvani succeeded in showing the presence of sparks exactly as if the animal were one of the apparatuses by which the sparks of frictional electricity are developed. At this time this seemed surprising enough. Galvani also endeavored to demonstrate that the electricity in the electric torpedo differed only in degree, but not in quality, from certain electric manifestations that he had noted in the bodies of other animals, especially the frog. His idea always was to show the existence of a natural animal electricity, by means of which some of the complex mechanism of life was accomplished. He seems to have had some notion of the theory that has been suggested often enough since, and is not yet entirely disproved, that there is some very close relationship between nerve impulses and the electric current. In this, of course, he was far ahead of his time, and utterly unable to make absolute demonstration, because of the lack of proper apparatus.

The most interesting quality of Galvani's scientific career is the thoroughly experimental character of all his researches into natural phenomena. Few men have known so well how to vary their experiments so as to bring out new details of scientific knowledge. His experimental skill was of the highest order, and it is to this that we owe the development in his hands of the nascent science of electricity to a point {125} where it became easy to continue its natural evolution. Galvani's work furnished the necessary stimulus to Volta, and then the real foundation of modern electricity was laid.

Almost more interesting than Galvani the scientist, however, is Galvani the man. As one of his biographers said of him, he joined to the most eminent intellectual genius a group of very precious qualities of the heart. Utterly unselfish in his relationship to others, he was known to be extremely sympathetic and had a large number of friends. His friends, too, he bound to him by even more than the proverbial hoops of steel, so that when they passed out of life they left him unconsolable. While it was very hard to get him to take part in social functions at which numbers of people were gathered, he was by no means a recluse, and liked to be in the company of a few friends. He seemed to care very little for the renown that his discoveries gave him, and refused, as far as possible, to be made the object of public congratulations and testimonials.

His relations with his patients--for during all of his long career he continued to practise, especially surgery and obstetrics--were of the friendliest character. While his distinction as a professor at the university gave him many opportunities for practice among the rich, he was always ready and willing to help the poor, and, indeed, seemed to feel more at home among poor patients than in the society of the wealthy and noble. Even towards the end of his life, when the loss of many friends, and especially his wife, made him retire within himself much more than before, he continued to exercise his professional skill for the benefit of the poor, though he often refused to take cases that might have proved sources of considerable gain to him. Early in life, when he was very busy between his professional work and his practice, he remarked more than once, on refusing {126} to take the cases of wealthy patients, that they had the money with which to obtain other physicians, while the poor did not, and he would prefer to keep some time for his services for them.

Toward the end of his life Galvani was not a little perturbed by the course of events around him and by the sweeping away of faith in old beliefs, consequent upon the French Revolution and the philosophic movement that had led up to it. Seeing around him, too, the abuses to which this supposed liberty and assertion of the rights of man led, it used to be a favorite expression of Galvani that "A little philosophy led men away from God, but a good deal of it led them back to Him again." Especially did he consider this true with regard to younger men, whose lack of wisdom in the difficult phases of life made them think their philosophy of things was complete, until sad experience had taught them the necessity for lifting men's minds above any mere religion of humanity, any mere stoic resignation to the inevitable, if what was best in them was to be brought out.

A very interesting phase of the Italian university life of that time is revealed in two important incidents of Galvani's university career. One of his professors, one, by the way, for whom he seems to have had a great deal of respect, and to whose lectures he devoted much attention, was Laura Caterina Maria Bassi, the distinguished woman professor of philosophy at the University of Bologna, about the middle of the eighteenth century. It is doubtless to her teaching that Galvani owes some of his thoroughgoing conservatism in philosophic speculation, a conservatism that was of great service to him later on in life, in the midst of the ultra-radical principles which became fashionable just before and during the French Revolution. Madame Bassi seems to have had her influence on him for good not only during his student {127} career, but also later in life, for she was the wife of a prominent physician in Bologna, and Galvani was often in social contact with her during his years of connection with the university.

As might, perhaps, be expected, seeing that his own happy domestic life showed him that an educated woman might be the centre of intellectual influence, Galvani seems to have had no spirit of opposition to even the highest education for women. This is very well illustrated by the first formal lecture in his course on anatomy at the university, which had for its subject the models for the teaching of anatomy that had been made by Madame Manzolini. In the early part of the eighteenth century Madame Manzolini had been the professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, and in order to make the teaching of this difficult subject easier and more definite she modelled with great care and delicate attention to every detail, so that they imitated actual dissections of the human body very closely, a set of wax figures which replaced the human body for demonstration purposes at least at the beginning of the anatomical course.

Galvani, in taking up the work of lecturer on anatomy, appreciated how much such a set of models would help in making the introduction to anatomical study easy, yet at the same time without detracting from its exactness, and, accordingly, introduced his students to Madame Manzolini's set of models in his very first lecture. At the time there were those connected with the teaching of anatomy who considered the use of these models as rather an effeminate proceeding. Galvani's lack of prejudice in the matter shows the readiness of the man to accept the best wherever he found it without regard to persons or feelings.

He was one of the most popular professors that the University of Bologna has ever had. He was not in the ordinary {128} sense of the word an orator, but he was a born teacher. The source of the enthusiasm which he aroused in his hearers was undoubtedly his own love for teaching and the power it gave him to express even intricate problems in simple, straightforward language. More than any of his predecessors he understood that experiments and demonstrations must be the real groundwork of the teaching of science. Accordingly, very few of his lectures were given without the aid of these material helps to attract attention. Besides he was known to be one who delighted to answer questions and was perfectly frank about the limitations of his knowledge whenever there was no real answer to be given to a question that had been proposed. Though an original discoverer of the first rank, he was extremely modest, particularly when talking about the details of his discoveries, or subjects relating to them.

The most striking proof of the thorough conscientiousness with which he faced the duties of life is to be found in his conduct after the establishment of the so-called Cis-Alpine Republic in Italy. This was a government established merely by force of arms without the consent of the people and a plain usurpation of the rights of the previous government. He considered himself bound in duty to the authority under which he had lived all his previous life and to which he had sworn fealty. When the University of Bologna was reorganized under the new government the first requirement of all those who were made professors was that they should take the oath of allegiance to the new government. This he refused to do. His motives can be readily understood, and though practically all the other professors of the university had taken the oath he did not consider that this freed him from his conscientious obligations in the matter.

Accordingly, he was dropped from the roll of professors {129} and deprived of the never very large salary which he had obtained from this chair. On this sum he had practically depended for his existence and he soon began to suffer from want. While he had been a successful practitioner of medicine, especially of surgery, he had always been very liberal and had spent large sums of money in demonstrations for his lectures and personal experimentation and in materials for the museums of the university. He began to suffer from actual want and friends had to come to his assistance. He refused, however, to give up his scruples in the matter and accept the professorship which was still open for him. Finally, at the end of two years, influence was brought to bear on the new government and Galvani was allowed to accept his chair in the university without taking the oath of allegiance. This tribute came too late, however, and within a short time after his restoration to his professorship he died.

That his action in this matter was very properly appreciated by his contemporaries, and that the moral influence of his example was not lost, can be realized from the expressions used by Alibert, the Secretary-general of the Medical Society of Emulation, in the historical address on Galvani which he delivered before that society in 1801:

"Galvani constantly refused to take the civil oath demanded by the decrees of the Cis-Alpine Republic. Who can blame him for having followed the voice of his conscience, that sacred, interior voice, which alone prescribes the duties of man and which has preceded all human laws? Who could not praise him for having sacrificed with such exemplary resignation all the emoluments of his professorship rather than violate the solemn engagements made under religious sanction?"

In the same panegyric there is a very curiously interesting passage with regard to Galvani's habit of frequently closing his {130} lectures by calling attention to the complexity yet the purposefulness of natural things and the inevitable conclusion that they must have been created with a definite purpose by a Supreme Being possessed of intelligence. At the time that Alibert wrote his memoir it was the fashion to consider, at least in France, that Christianity was a thing of the past, and that while theism might remain, that would be all that could be expected to survive the crumbling effect of the emancipation of man.

He says: "We have seen already what was Galvani's zeal and his love for the religion which he professed. We may add that in his public demonstration he never finished his lectures without exhorting his pupils to a renewal of their faith by leading them always back to the idea of the eternal Providence which develops, preserves and causes life to flow among so many different kinds of things. I write now," he continues, "in the age of reason, of tolerance and of light. Must I then defend Galvani in the eyes of posterity for one of the most beautiful sentiments that can spring from the nature of man? No, and they are but little initiated in the saner mechanism of philosophy who refused to recognize the truths established on evidence so strong and so authentic. Breves haustus in philosophiâ ad atheismum ducunt, longiores autem reducunt ad deum, small draughts of philosophy lead to atheism, but longer draughts bring one back to God"--(which may perhaps be better translated by Pope's well-known lines, "A little learning (in philosophy) is a dangerous thing; drink deep or touch not the Pierian spring").

Galvani has been honored by his fellow-citizens of Bologna as one of their greatest townsmen and by the university as one of her worthiest sons. In 1804 a medal was struck in his honor, on the reverse of which, surrounding a figure of the {131} genius of science, were the two legends: "Mors mihi vita" "Death is life or me," and "Spiritus intus alit," "The spirit works within," which were favorite expressions of the great scientist while living and are lively symbols of the spirit which animated him. In 1814 a monument was erected to him in the courtyard of the University of Bologna. It is surmounted by his bust, made by the most distinguished Bolognian sculptor of the time, De Maria. On the pedestal there are two figures in bas-relief executed by the same sculptor, which represent religion and philosophy, the inspiring geniuses of Galvani's life.

Before he died, he asked, as had Dante, whose work was his favorite reading, to be buried in the humble habit of a member of the Third Order of St. Francis. He is said to have valued his fellowship with the sons of the "poor little man of Assisi" more than the many honorary fellowships of various kinds which had been conferred upon him by the scientific societies all over Europe.

LAENNEC, MARTYR TO SCIENCE

The knowledge which a man can use is the only real knowledge, the only knowledge which has life and growth in it and converts itself into practical power. The rest hangs like dust about the brain, or dries like rain-drops off the stones.
--Froude.

LAENNEC, MARTYR TO SCIENCE.

On August 13, 1826, there died at Quimper in Brittany at the early age of forty-five, one of the greatest physicians of all time. His name, René Theodore Laennec, was destined to be forever associated with one of the most fruitful advances in medicine that has ever been made, and one which practically introduced the modern era of scientific diagnosis. At the present time the most interesting phase of medical development is concerned with the early recognition and the prevention of tuberculosis. To Laennec more than to any other is due all the data which enable the physician of the twentieth century to make the diagnosis of tuberculosis with assurance, and to treat it with more confidence than before, and so prevent its spread as far as that is possible.

The history of pulmonary consumption in its most modern phase is centred around the names of three men, Laennec, Villemin, and Koch. To Laennec will forever belong the honor of having fixed definitely the clinical picture of the disease, and of having separated it by means of auscultation and his pathological studies from all similar affections of the lungs. Villemin showed that it was an infectious disease, absolutely specific in character, and capable of transmission by inoculation from man to the animal. To Koch the world owes the knowledge of the exact cause of the disease and consequently of the practical method for preventing its spread. The isolation of the bacillus of tuberculosis is the great triumph of the end of the nineteenth century, as the separation of the disease from all others by Laennec was the triumph of the beginning of that century. There is {136} still room for a fourth name in the list, that of the man who will discover a specific remedy for the disease. It is to be hoped that his coming will not be long delayed.

The estimation in which Laennec was held by the most distinguished among his contemporaries, may be very well appreciated from the opinions expressed with regard to him and his work by the best-known Irish and English clinical observers of the period. Dr. William Stokes, who was himself, as we shall see, one of the most important contributors to our clinical knowledge of diseases of the heart and lungs in the nineteenth century, said with regard to the great French clinician whom he considered his master:

"Time has shown that the introduction of auscultation and its subsidiary physical signs has been one of the greatest boons ever conferred by the genius of man on the world.

"A new era in medicine has been marked by a new science, depending on the immutable laws of physical phenomena, and, like the discoveries founded on such a basis, simple in its application and easily understood--a gift of science to a favored son; one by which the ear is converted into the eye, the hidden recesses of visceral disease open to view; a new guide to the treatment, and a new help to the ready detection, prevention and cure of the most widely spread diseases which affect mankind."

Dr. Addison, who is best known by the disease which since his original description has been called by his name, was no less enthusiastic in praise of Laennec's work. He said:

"Were I to affirm that Laennec contributed more toward the advancement of the medical art than any other single individual, either of ancient or of modern times, I should probably be advancing a proposition which, in the estimation of many, is neither extravagant nor unjust. His work, {137} De l'Auscultation Mediate, will ever remain a monument of genius, industry, modesty and truth. It is a work in perusing which every succeeding page only tends to increase our admiration of the man, to captivate our attention, and to command our confidence. We are led insensibly to the bedside of his patients; we are startled by the originality of his system; we can hardly persuade ourselves that any means so simple can accomplish so much, can overcome and reduce to order the chaotic confusion of thoracic pathology; and hesitate not in the end to acknowledge our unqualified wonder at the triumphant confirmation of all he professed to accomplish."

These tributes to Laennec, however, from men who were his contemporaries across the channel, have been more than equalled by distinguished physicians on both sides of the Atlantic at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. While we might hesitate to accept the opinions of those who had been so close to him at the beginning of the new era of physical diagnosis, there can be no doubt now, after the lapse of three-quarters of a century, of what Laennec's influence really was, and the tributes of the twentieth century place him among the few great geniuses to whom scientific medicine owes its most important advance.

At the annual meeting of the State Medical Society of New York held in Albany at the end of January, 1903, the president of the society, Doctor Henry L. Elsner, of Syracuse, in his annual address devoted some paragraphs to a panegyric of Laennec. He wished to call attention to what had been accomplished for scientific medicine at the beginning of the last century by a simple observant practitioner. In the course of his references to Laennec and his work he said:

"It is by no means to be considered an accident that, {138} among the greatest advances in medicine made during the century just closed, the introduction of pathological anatomy and auscultation into the practice of medicine at the bedside were both effected by the same clear mind, Laennec. He is one of the greatest physicians of all time."

He then quoted the opinion of a distinguished English clinician, Professor T. Clifford Allbutt, who is well known, especially for his knowledge of the history of medicine. Professor Allbutt is the Regius Professor of Physic (a term about equivalent to our practice of medicine) of Cambridge University, England, and was invited to this country some years ago as the representative of English medicine to deliver the Lane lectures in San Francisco. During his stay in this country he delivered a lecture at Johns Hopkins University on "Medicine in the Nineteenth Century," in which he said, "Laennec gives me the impression of being one of the greatest physicians in history; one who deserves to stand by the side of Hippocrates and Galen, Harvey and Sydenham. Without the advances of pathology Laennec's work could not have been done; it was a revelation of the anatomy of the internal organs during the life of the patient."

René Theodore Hyacinthe Laennec, who is thus conceded by twentieth century medicine a place among the world's greatest medical discoverers, was born February 17, 1781, at Quimper in Bretagne, that rocky province at the north of France which has been the sturdy nursing mother of so many pure Celtic Frenchmen who have so mightily influenced the thought not only of their own country but of all the world. The names of such Bretons as Renan and Lamennais have a universal reputation and the province was even more distinguished for its scientists.

There was published [Footnote 2] a few years ago in France a detailed {139} history of Breton physicians. This work sketches the lives of the physicians of Breton birth from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Only those of the nineteenth century concern us, but the list even for this single century includes such distinguished names as Broussais, whose ideas in physiology dominated medicine for nearly the whole of the first half of the nineteenth century; Jobert, the famous French surgeon whose reputation was world-wide; Alphonse Guerin, another distinguished surgeon, whose work in the protection of wounds in some respects anticipated that of Lister; Chassaignac, to whose inventive genius surgery owes new means of preventing hemorrhage and purulent infection, and who introduced the great principle of surgical drainage; finally Maisonneuve, almost a contemporary, whose name is a household word to the surgeons of the present generation; without mentioning for the moment the subject of this sketch, Laennec, the greatest of them all. Six greater men never came from one province in the same limited space of time.

[Footnote 2: Les Médecins Bretons par Dr. Jules Roger. Paris, J. B. Baillière, 1900.]

Bretagne, "the land of granite covered with oaks" as the Bretons love to call it, may well be proud of its illustrious sons in the century just past. Taken altogether they form a striking example of how much the world owes to the children of the countryside who, born far from the hurrying bustle of city life, do not have their energies sapped before the proper time for their display comes. These Bretagne physicians, illustrious discoverers and ever faithful workers, are at the same time a generous tribute to the influence of the simple, honest sincerity of well-meaning parents whose religious faith was the well-spring of humble, model lives that formed a striking example for their descendants. The foundations of many a great reputation were laid in the simple village homes, far from the turmoil and the excitement of the fuller {140} life of great cities. The Bretons are but further examples of the fact that for genuine success in life the most precious preparation is residence in the country in childhood and adolescent years. The country districts of Normandy, the province lying just next to Bretagne, have furnished even more than their share of the Paris successes of the century, and have seen the Norman country boys the leaders of thought at the capital.

Laennec's father was a man of culture and intelligence, who, though a lawyer, devoted himself more to literature than his case books. His poetry is said to recall one of his better known compatriots, Deforges-Maillard. Laennec was but six years old when his mother died. His father seems to have felt himself too much preoccupied with his own work to assume the education of his son, and so the boy Laennec was placed under the guardianship of his grand-uncle, the Abbé Laennec, and lived with him for some years in the parish house at Elliant.

A relative writing of Laennec after his death says that the boy had the good fortune to be thus happily started on his path in life by a hand that was at once firm and sure. The training given him at this time was calculated to initiate him in the best possible way into those habits of application that made it possible for him to make great discoveries in after life. The boy was delicate besides, and the house of the good old rector-uncle was an excellent place for him, because of its large and airy rooms and the thoroughly hygienic condition in which it was kept. Household hygiene was not as common in those days as in our own and child mortality was higher, but the delicate boy thrived under the favorable conditions.

Besides the parish house was situated in the midst of a beautiful country. The perfectly regular and rather serious {141} life of the place was singularly well adapted to develop gradually and with due progression the precious faculties of a young, active mind and observant intelligence. This development was accomplished besides without any excitement or worry and without any of the violent contrasts or precocious disillusions of city life.

The boy passed some four or five years with his grand-uncle the priest and then went to finish his studies with a brother of his father, Dr. Laennec, a physician who has left a deservedly honored name. At this time Dr. Laennec was a member of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Nantes. The growing lad seems to have been wonderfully successful in his studies, and a number of prizes gained at school show how deeply he was interested in his work. During this time he learned English and German and became really ready to begin the study of the higher sciences. Besides working at his academic studies, Laennec paid some attention to his uncle in his professional work, and by careful observation laid the foundation of his medical studies. His character as an observer, rather than a student of books, showed itself very early. He devoted himself to the clinical investigation of cases in the military hospital and was especially interested in the study of anatomy.

In 1800, at the age of nineteen, he went to Paris. It was typical of the man and his careful, thoroughness all through life that the first impulse when he found himself free to work for himself, was to try to make up for what he considered defects in his elementary studies. It must not be forgotten that the ten years of Laennec's life, from his tenth to his twentieth year, came in the stormy time of the French Revolution, and that school regularity was very much disturbed. His first care then was to take up the study of Latin again. He learned to read and write the language with elegance and {142} purity. Later on, occasionally, he delivered his clinical lectures, especially when foreigners were present, in Latin. We shall have the occasion to see before the end of this article, with what easy grace he learned to use it from some passages of the preface of his book written in that language.

He did not allow his accessory studies, however, to interfere with his application to his professional work. He was one of those rare men who knew how to rest his mind by turning it from one occupation to another. When scarcely more than a year in Paris, Laennec secured the two first prizes for medicine and surgery in the medical department of the University of Paris. In 1804 he wrote two medical theses, one of them in Latin, the other in French. The subject of both was Hippocrates, the great Greek father of medicine, whom Laennec admired very much and whose method of clinical observation was to prove the key-note of the success of Laennec's own medical career.

At this time the Paris school of medicine had two great rival teachers. One of them was Corvisart, who endeavored to keep up the traditions of Hippocrates and taught especially the necessity for careful observation of disease. The other was Pinel, famous in our time mainly for having stricken the manacles from the insane in the asylums of Paris, but who was known to his contemporaries as a great exponent of what may be called "Philosophic Medicine." Corvisart taught principally practical medicine at the bedside; Pinel mainly the theory of medicine by the analysis of diseased conditions and their probable origin.

Needless to say, Laennec's sympathies were all with Corvisart. He became a favorite pupil of this great master, who did so much for scientific medicine by introducing the method of percussion, invented nearly half a century before by Auenbrugger, but forgotten and neglected, so that it {143} would surely have been lost but for the distinguished Frenchman's rehabilitation of its practice. Corvisart was a man of great influence. He had caught Napoleon's eye. The great Emperor of the French had the knack for choosing men worthy of the confidence he wished to place in them. His unerring judgment in this matter led him to select Corvisart as his personal physician at a moment when his selection was of the greatest service to practical medicine, for no one was doing better scientific work at the time, and this quasi-court position at once gave Corvisart's ideas a vogue they would not otherwise have had.

Corvisart's most notable characteristic was a sympathetic encouragement of the work of others, especially in what concerned actual bedside observation. Laennec was at once put in most favorable circumstances, then, for his favorite occupation of studying the actualities of disease on the living patient and at the autopsy. For nearly ten years he devoted himself almost exclusively to the care and study of hospital patients. In 1812 he was made physician to the Beaujon Hospital, Paris. Four years later he was transferred to the Necker Hospital, where he was destined to bring his great researches to a successful issue. To the Necker Hospital, before long, students from all over the world flocked to his clinical lectures, to keep themselves in touch with the great discoveries the youthful master was making. In spite of rather delicate health Laennec fulfilled his duties of physician and professor with scrupulous exactitude and with a self-sacrificing devotion that was, unfortunately, to prove detrimental to his health before very long.

One of his contemporaries says of him:

"Laennec was almost an ideal teacher. He talked very easily and his lesson was always arranged with logical method, clearness and simplicity. He disdained utterly {144} all the artifices of oratory. He knew, however, how to give his lectures a charm of their own. It was as if he were holding a conversation with those who heard him and they were interested every moment of the time that he talked, so full were his lectures of practical instruction."

Another of his contemporaries says, naïvely: "At the end of the lesson we did not applaud, because it was not the custom. Very few, however, who heard him once, failed to promise themselves the pleasure of assisting at others of his lectures."

The work on which Laennec's fame depended and the discovery with which his name, in the words of our great American diagnostician, Austin Flint, the elder, will live to the end of time was concerned with the practice of auscultation. This is the method of listening to the sounds produced in the chest when air is inspired and expired in health and disease, and also to the sound produced by the heart and its valves in health and disease. Nearly two centuries ago, in 1705, an old medical writer quoted by Walshe, in his "Treatise on the Disease of the Lungs and Heart" said very quaintly but very shrewdly: "Who knows but that one may discover the works performed in the several offices and shops of a man's body by the sounds they make and thereby discover what instrument or engine is out of order!"

It was just this that Laennec did. He solved the riddle of the sounds within the human workshop, to continue the quaint old figure, and pointed out which were the results of health and which of disease. Not only this, but he showed the difference between the sounds produced in health and disease by those different engines, the lungs and the heart. The way in which he was led to devote his attention originally to the subject of auscultation is described by Laennec himself with a simplicity and directness so charmingly characteristic {145} of the man, of his thoroughly Christian modesty, of his solicitude for even the slightest susceptibility of others and of his prompt inventive readiness, that none of his biographers has been able to resist the temptation to quote his own words with regard to the interesting incident, and so we feel that we must give them here.

He says:

"In 1816 I was consulted by a young person who was laboring under the general symptoms of a diseased heart. In her case percussion and the application of the hand (what modern doctors call palpation) were of little service because of a considerable degree of stoutness. The other method, that namely of listening to the sounds within the chest by the direct application of the ear to the chest wall, being rendered inadmissible by the age and sex of the patient, I happened to recollect a simple and well-known fact in acoustics and fancied it might be turned to some use on the present occasion. The fact I allude to is the great distinctness with which we hear the scratch of a pin at one end of a piece of wood on applying our ear to the other.

"Immediately on the occurrence of this idea I rolled a quire of paper into a kind of cylinder and applied one end of it to the region of the heart and the other to my ear. I was not a little surprised and pleased to find that I could thereby perceive the action of the heart in a manner much more clear and distinct than I had ever been able to do by the immediate application of the ear.

"From this moment I imagined that the circumstance might furnish means for enabling us to ascertain the character not only of the action of the heart, but of every species of sound produced by the motion of all the thoracic viscera, and consequently for the exploration of the respiration, the voice, the râles and perhaps even the fluctuation of fluid effused in the pleura or pericardium. With this conviction I forthwith {146} commenced at the Necker Hospital a series of observations from which I have been able to deduce a set of new signs of the diseases of the chest. These are for the most part certain, simple and prominent, and calculated perhaps, to render the diagnosis of the diseases of the lungs, heart and pleura as decided and circumstantial as the indications furnished to the surgeons by the finger or sound, in the complaints wherein these are of use."

This is the unassuming way in which Laennec announces his great discovery. He did not in modern fashion immediately cry "Eureka!" and announce the far-reaching importance of his method of diagnosis. For two years he devoted himself to the patient study of the application of his method and the appreciation of its possibilities and its limitations. Then he presented a simple memoir to the French Academy of Sciences on the subject. A committee of three, then distinguished members of the Academy, Doctors Portal, Pelletan and Percy were named to investigate the new discovery.

It is rather interesting to notice, though almost needless to say, that the names of these men would be now absolutely unremembered in medical history but for the fortuitous circumstance that made them Laennec's investigators. Such is too often the ephemeralness of contemporary reputation. Fortunately for the committee, they reported favorably upon Laennec's discoveries. It is not always true of new and really great advances in medicine that they are received with proper appreciation upon their first announcement. Even Harvey said of his discovery of the circulation of the blood that he expected no one of any reputation in his own generation to accept it. It is not very surprising to find then in the matter of the Laennec investigators that there is a cautious reserve in their report, showing that they were not too ready {147} to commit themselves to a decided opinion on the importance of the new discovery, nor to any irretrievable commendation.

The important part of the discovery was supposed to consist in the use of the wooden cylinder which Laennec came to employ instead of the roll of paper originally used. This wooden cylinder, now familiar to us under the excellent name invented for it by Laennec himself is the modern single stethoscope. This instrument is of great service. The really important part of Laennec's work, however, was not the invention of the stethoscope, but the exact observation of the changes of the breath sounds that could be noted with it in various forms of chest diseases.

Laennec succeeded in pointing out how each one of the various diseases of the heart and lungs might be recognized from every other. Before his time, most of the diseases of the lungs, if accompanied with any tendency to fever particularly, were called lung fever. He showed the difference between bronchitis and pneumonia, pneumonia and pleurisy, and the various forms of tuberculosis and even the rarer pathological conditions of the lung, such as cancer, or the more familiar conditions usually not associated with fever, emphysema, and some of the forms of retraction.

With regard to heart disease, it was before Laennec's discovery almost a sealed chapter in practical medicine. It was known that people died from heart disease often and, not infrequently, without much warning. The possibility that heart conditions could be separated one from another, and that some of them could be proved to be comparatively harmless, some of them liable to cause lingering illness, while others were surely associated with the probability of sudden fatal termination, was scarcely dreamed of. It is to Laennec's introduction of auscultation that modern medicine owes all its exacter knowledge of heart lesions and their {148} significance. He himself did not solve all the mysteries of sound here as he did in the lungs; indeed, he made some mistakes that render him more sympathetic because they bring him down to the level of our humanity. He did make important discoveries with regard to heart disease, and his method of diagnosis during his own life was, in the hands of the Irish school of medicine, to prove the key to the problems of disease he failed to unlock.

Almost at once Laennec's method of auscultation attracted widespread attention. From Germany, from Italy, from England, even from the United States, in those days when our medical men had so few opportunities to go abroad, medical students and physicians went to Paris to study the method under the direction of the master himself and to learn from him his admirable technique of auscultation. Those who came found that the main thing to be seen was the patient observation given to every case and Laennec's admirably complete examination of each condition. The services to diagnosis rendered by the method were worthy of the enthusiasm it aroused. Only the work of Pasteur has attracted corresponding attention during the nineteenth century. Physicians practice auscultation so much as a matter of course now that it is hard to understand what an extreme novelty it was in 1820, and how much it added to the confidence of practitioners in their diagnosis of chest diseases.

Bouilland said, with an enthusiasm that does not go beyond literal truth, "A sense was lacking in medicine and I would say, if I dared, that Laennec the creator, by a sort of divine delegation of a new sense, supplied the long-felt want. The sense which medicine lacked was hearing. Sight and touch had already been developed in the service of medical diagnosis. Hearing was more important than the other two senses, and in giving it to scientific medicine Laennec disclosed a new {149} world of knowledge destined to complete the rising science of diagnosis."

Henri Roger said: "Laennec in placing his ear on the chest of his patient heard for the first time in the history of human disease the cry of suffering organs. First of all, he learned to know the variations in their cries and the expressive modulations of the air-carrying tubes and the orifices of the heart that indicate the points where all is not well. He was the first to understand and to make others realize the significance of this pathological language, which, until then, had been misunderstood or, rather, scarcely listened to. Henceforth, the practitioner of medicine, endowed with one sense more than before and with his power of investigation materially increased, could read for himself the alterations hidden in the depths of the organism. His ear opened to the mind a new world in medical science."

The freely expressed opinions of distinguished German, English and American physicians show that these enthusiastic praises from his French compatriots are well deserved by Laennec for the beautifully simple, yet wonderfully fecund method that he placed before the medical profession in all its completeness.

The first employment of the stethoscope by rolling up sheets of paper is of itself a sign of his readiness of invention. He made his own stethoscopes by hand and liked to spend his leisure time fashioning them carefully and even ornately. One of the stethoscopes certainly used by him and probably made by himself is to be seen at the Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

After three years of study and patient investigation of the use of auscultation in pulmonary and cardiac diagnosis, Laennec wrote his book on the subject. This is an immortal work--a true classic in its complete treatment of the subject. {150} We have had thousands of books written on the subject since Laennec's time, and yet no physician could do better at the present moment than study Laennec's two comparatively small volumes to learn the art of physical diagnosis.

It is a characteristic of genius to give a completeness to work that endows it with an enduring independent vitality. Almost innumerable disciples follow in the footsteps of a teacher, and each thinks that he adds something to the fulness of the revelation made by the master. At the end of a century the fourth generation finds that scarcely anything has been added and that the master's work alone stands out, not merely as the great central fact of the new theory or doctrine, but as the absolute vital entity to which the other supposed discoveries are only adventitious and not entirely indispensable accessories.

Dr. Austin Flint, the elder, admittedly one of the greatest diagnosticians in pulmonary and heart diseases that we have ever had in America, said on this subject: "Suffice it to say here that, although during the forty years that have elapsed since the publication of Laennec's works the application of physical exploration has been considerably extended and rendered more complete in many of its details, the fundamental truths presented by the discoverer of auscultation not only remain as a basis of the new science, but for a large portion of the existing superstructure. Let the student become familiar with all that is now known on this subject, and he will then read the writings of Laennec with amazement that there remained so little to be altered or added."

Laennec's unremitting devotion to his hospital work finally impaired his health. He was never robust and strangers who came to Paris and saw him for the first time wondered that he should be able to stand the labor he required of himself. The portraits of him give a good impression of {151} his ascetic delicacy; they convey besides a certain wistfulness, the look of one close to human suffering, and unable to do all that he would wish to relieve it. Long before his discovery of the mysteries of auscultation, he had accomplished results that of themselves, and without his subsequent master discovery, would have given him an enduring name in medical literature. Laennec's genius enabled him to make a really great discovery, but Laennec's talent, the principal part of which was an inexhaustible faculty for untiring labor, an infinite capacity for taking pains with all that he did, enabled him to make a number of smaller discoveries any one of which would have given a great reputation to a lesser man.

Some idea of the amount of work that he did in preparing himself for the observations that were to result in his discovery may be gathered from details of his earlier career. During the first three years of his attendance at La Charité Hospital in Paris he drew up a minute history of nearly four hundred cases of disease. As early as 1805 he read a paper on hydatid cysts. These cysts were formerly thought to be hollow tumors formed within the tissues themselves somewhat as other cystic tumors are formed. Laennec showed conclusively that their origin was entirely due to certain worms that had become parasites in human beings. The cysts instead of being tumors were really one stage of the worm's existence, and had an organization and an independent existence of their own. He gave an exact description of them and even showed that there were several types of the parasite, and described the different changes that various forms produced in the human tissues. This study of the hydatid parasites remains a remarkable contribution to medicine down even to our own day.

During these early years Laennec devoted himself particularly to the study of pathology. Like all the men who {152} have made great discoveries in medicine he understood that all true medical advance must be founded on actual observation of the changes caused by disease in the tissues, and that this knowledge can only be obtained in the autopsy room. For years he devoted himself to the faithful study of the tissues of patients dead from various forms of disease. He wrote as the result of this work a treatise on peritonitis that was a distinct advance over anything known before his time and which, in the words of Benjamin Ward Richardson, "as a pathological study was shrewdly in anticipation of the later work of one who became his most formidable rival, the famous Broussais."

From the peritoneum his attention was attracted to the liver. As early as 1804 he wrote a description of the membranes of the liver. Pathological changes in the liver continued to occupy his attention for some time, and it is to him we owe the name cirrhosis of the liver, as a term for the changes which are produced by alcohol in this gland. Alcoholic cirrhosis is often spoken of as Laennec's cirrhosis of the liver, and he was the first to point out the significance of the changes in the organ, their etiology and the reason for the symptoms that usually accompany this condition. This work alone would have been sufficient to have made Laennec's name a permanent fixture in medical literature.

During the early years of Laennec's career at Paris, the French Anatomical Society was founded and Laennec became a prominent member of it. Corvisart, who was the moving spirit in the society, was at this time--the early years of the nineteenth century--doing his great teaching at the medical school of the University of Paris. He was Laennec's master, and was at the height of his glory. It was a constant source of surprise to his students to note how well the master's diagnosis agreed with postmortem findings. This is, after {153} all, the only true criterion of scientific diagnosis. It is not surprising that the strict application of this practical method of control of medical theory soon gave rise to a series of distinct advances in medical knowledge of the greatest importance.

Discussions of cases were frequent and Laennec took a prominent part in them. His knowledge of medicine was broadening in this great field of practice, and he was chosen as one of the contributors to the Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales. His articles for this work contained much original matter of great value and suggestive views of notable importance. Laennec was the first to give a description of carcinoma encephaloides and certain especially malignant forms of cancers. He showed the distinction between pigmented spots of benignant character and those that were due to malignant disease.

"After all, however," says Benjamin Ward Richardson, "the grand reputation of Laennec must rest on his one immortal work. It is not too much to say that any man of good intelligence could have written the other memoirs. No one less than Laennec could have written the 'Treatise on Mediate Auscultation and the Use of the Stethoscope.' The true student of medicine, who never wears out, reads this original work of Laennec once in two years at least, so long as he is in practice and takes a living interest in the subject of which it treats. It ranks equally with the original works of Vesalius, Harvey and Bichat and as a section of medical literature is quite equal to any section of Hippocrates." [Footnote 3]

[Footnote 3: The full title of this work of Laennec's is "De l'auscultation médiate ou traité du diagnostic des maladies des poumons et du coeur par R. T. H. Laennec." Its modest motto is the Greek sentence: [Greek Text] (The most important part of an art is to be able to observe properly.) The book was published in Paris by J. A. Brosson et J. S. Chandé, rue Pierre-Sarrazin, No. 9, 1819.]

{154}

Some quotations from the Latin preface to the book will serve to show that Laennec appreciated the value of the discovery he had made for the diagnosis of chest diseases, yet that he did not expect it to be taken up enthusiastically at once, and in his modest way he adds that he shall be satisfied if it should serve to save but one human being from suffering and death. [Footnote 4]

[Footnote 4: "Imo neminem hanc methodum expertum deinceps cum Baglivio dicturum esse spero: O quantum difficile est diagnoscere morbos pulmonum."

"Nostra enim aetas incuriosa quoque suorum (the italics are Laennec's own); et si quid novi ab homine coaevo in medio ponitur, risu ut plurimum ineptisque cavillationibus excipiunt; quippe facilius est aspernari quam experiri."

"Hoc mihi satis est quod bonis doctisque viris nonnullis acceptam aegrotisque multis utilem, hanc methodum fore confidere possim; hominem unum ereptum orco dulce dignumque meae atque etiam majoris operae pretium praemium fore existimem."

"I may say that no one who has made himself expert with this method will after this have occasion to say with Baglivi, Oh! how difficult it is to diagnose disease of the lungs."

"For our generation is not inquisitive as to what is being accomplished by its sons. Claims of new discoveries made by contemporaries are likely for the most part to be met by smiles and mocking remarks. It is always easier to condemn than to test by actual experience."

"It suffices for me if I can only feel sure that this method will commend itself to a few worthy and learned men who will make it of use to many patients. I shall consider it ample, yea, more than sufficient reward for my labor, if it should prove the means by which a single human being is snatched from untimely death."]

Unfortunately, as we have said, Laennec's untiring devotion for nearly twenty years to medical investigation caused his health to give way. It is painful to think that in the full tide of the success of his great labors, when the value of his work was only just beginning to be properly appreciated and when he had attained a position which would satisfy even lofty ambitions, his nerves gave way and he had many {155} of the typical melancholic symptoms that disturb the modern neurasthenic. Fortunately, his habits of life, always extremely abstemious, and his liking for outdoor sports had been a safeguard for him. He retired to the country and for nearly two years spent most of his time in the open air.

It was not long before surcease from intellectual labor and indulgence in field sport restored him to health and to activity. He foresaw, however, that to go back to the city and to his scientific work would almost surely lead to another breakdown. One of his biographers states that it was the great regard which he had for his family and the powerful influence of his religious principles which alone had sufficient weight to make him leave his retreat in the country. After an absence of two years, he returned to Paris and once more took up his hospital duties.

Soon after his return he received the appointment of physician to the Duchesse de Berri. One of the main objections to this position in Laennec's mind seems to have been the necessity for occasionally wearing court dress with a sword and regalia. Ordinarily he went dressed very plainly, and it was noted that, when men of much less authority and much less practice used their own carriages, he usually took a hired cab. His position at court gave him enough influence to bring about the proper recognition of his merit as a teacher. At this time his lectures on auscultation, though he held no regular professorship, were crowded by students from all nations. The year after his return to Paris he was appointed Professor of Medicine in the College of France, and afterward of clinical medicine at the Hospital La Charité where he had made his own studies as a medical student.

About this time he was offered a position of importance as a member of the Royal Council of Public Instruction. This he refused, however, because it would deprive him of {156} some of the precious time that he wished to devote to the further investigation of important subjects in clinical medicine and especially to the elaboration of his method of auscultation.

One of the most striking features of Laennec's character was his absolute placidity and lack of personal ambition. His life was passed in the most complete calm. He devoted himself to his work, and had the supreme joy of duty accomplished, seeming to look for no other enjoyment in life. Those who knew him best said that they had never seen him angry or even impatient. In the midst of his discussion with Broussais, it might have been expected that there would occasionally have been some flashes of impatience, for the great protagonist of medical theory was a man of satiric character, and his supposedly scientific discussion was stained by some very bitter personalities. In spite of all Broussais' sarcasm, Laennec remained absolutely unmoved. Occasionally his friends saw a smile at some of Broussais' emphatic asseverations, but Laennec simply continued at his work, and looked straight ahead, convinced that what he was doing was for the cause of truth, and the truth would finally prevail.

He was known for the kindness of his disposition, and his readiness to help his friends whenever it was possible. He was never known to injure anyone, and a certain quiet elevation of spirit preserved him from all conceit. One of his most intimate Breton friends, Kergaradec, said, "I have never heard Laennec express by a single word, or even by the slightest insinuation, anything that might seem to indicate pride in what he had accomplished or that might provoke a listener to say something in praise of him." The friends he made were bound to him with hoops of steel. They were not many, for he had not the time to waste on many friends. He was too devoted to his work, and too {157} deeply interested in the great problem whose solution he foresaw meant so much for the good of humanity, to have much time for anything but his studies and his patients.

With regard to Laennec's personal character, his most recent biographer Dr. Henri Saintignon, has said: [Footnote 5]

[Footnote 5: Laennec, Sa vie et son oeuvre. Par Dr. Henri Saintignon. Paris, J. B. Baillière et Fils, 1904.]

"I have shown in the course of this life just what was the character of Laennec and his intellectual and moral qualities, so that it will not be necessary for me to dwell at length on this subject, in concluding. His great piety, which had never been abandoned from his earliest infancy, was his main guide during all his life. Without ostentation, yet without any weakness, absolutely ignoring human respect, he obeyed with utter simplicity the prescriptions of his faith. While he did not conceal his convictions when during the first empire they might have proved a source of lessened esteem, or positive prejudice, he made no noise about them when under the Restoration they might have proved the means of advancement and of fortune. He had not in the slightest degree what is so often objected to, in devoted persons, namely, the love of making proselytes. The words of Prof. Desgenettes might very well have been applied to him: as he did not believe himself to have any mission to lead others to his opinions, he limited himself to preaching by example. The reproach of being rabidly clerical or propagandist, which was urged against him, when he first became a member of the faculty of medicine, was absolutely unjustified. Laennec never occupied himself with politics nor with religion in public. As a physician he devoted himself exclusively to his profession, receiving at his clinic all those who desired to follow his teaching, whatever might be their opinions or their beliefs."