The 150th anniversary of the death of Sir John Forbes passed on 13 November 2011 perhaps unnoticed except in his native land. This memoir is an attempt to remind the medical profession of some of his achievements and of the value of percussion and auscultation in the bedside diagnosis of diseases of the heart and lungs.
LaёnnecRTH. De L’Auscultation Médiate; ou Traité du diagnostic des maladies des poumons et du Coeur, fondé principalement sur ce moyen d’exploration1819; Vols 2, Paris: Brosson et Chaudé.
2.
ForbesJ. A treatise on the diseases of the chest in which they are described according to their anatomical characters, and their diagnosis established on a new principle by means of acoustic instruments, London: T & G Underwood, 1821.
3.
ForbesJ. Original cases with dissections and observations illustrating the use of the stethoscope and percussion in the diagnosis of diseases of the chest; also commentaries on the same subjects selected and translated from AVENBRUGGER [sic], CORVISART, LAENNEC and others, London: T & G Underwood, 1824. The pages are numbered from the author’s copy of Forbes’ Original Cases … ; this was rescued by a medical colleague from the fate of being cast into a ‘skip’ on the closure of Bagueley Hospital, Manchester in the 1960s. It now resides in the Library of the Liverpool Medical Institution.
4.
Ibid, p. viii.
5.
Ibid, p. xi.
6.
Ibid, p. xxiii.
7.
Ibid, p. xxiv.
8.
Ibid, p. 263.
9.
Ibid, pp. 46–47.
10.
Ibid, p. 64.
11.
Ibid, p. 66.
12.
Ibid, p. 68.
13.
Ibid, p. 68.
14.
Ibid, p. xxvii.
15.
Ibid, pp. 102–109.
16.
AgnewRAL. Heart failure in Penzance: a Cornish Enigma. Vesalius2001; xvii: 35–35.
17.
Forbes J. (op. cit Ref. 3), p. 255.
18.
Ibid, p. 257.
19.
Ibid, p. 259.
20.
Ibid, p. 247.
21.
Ibid, p. 253.
22.
Ibid, p. 254.
23.
Personal Communication, Bernadette Molitor. Service d’histoire de la médecine, Bibliothe`que Interuniversitaire de Médecine, Paris.
24.
Forbes J. (op. cit Ref. 3), p. 279.
25.
AgnewRAL. The Life of Sir John Forbes (1787–1861), Bramber, West Sussex: Bernard Durnford Publishing, 2009, pp. 38–38.
26.
BarkerJ. The Brontёs, London: Abacus. An imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, 2010, pp. 690–690.
27.
Agnew RAL. Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) and Sir John Forbes (1787–1861), neighbours in Old Burlington Street, Westminster. Journal of Medical Biography (in press).
28.
AgnewRAL. John Forbes FRS (1787–1861), Oxford: The James Lind Library, 2008, pp. 4–4.
29.
AgnewRAL. Forbes, Sir John (1787–1861), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 3–3.
