Abstract
Major advances in the French medical system following the French Revolution have stimulated a rich historiography of which Michel Foucault’s Naissance de la clinique: une archéologie du regard médical (1963) and Erwin H. Ackerknecht’s Medicine at the Paris Hospital, 1794–1848 (1967) are of lasting significance. Changes in the organisation and structure of hospitals accompanied the development and availability of new medical technologies and procedures and encouraged a more intense study of the aetiology and pathology of disease. Theories about asthma and its treatment profited from this dynamic environment as Classical Greek doctrines about the effect of the humours on bodily imbalance gave way to an increasingly more precise understanding of the nature and cause of asthma. The clinician and teacher, Armand Trousseau (1801–1867), who held the chair of Clinical Medicine at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris and was himself an asthmatic, promoted new theories about the illness and developed innovative ways of dealing with its effects. Among his patients was the banker and financier, Emile Pereire (1800–1875), a lifelong asthmatic. Based on the Pereire Family Archives (hereafter AFP), the case of Emile Pereire provides a preface to the later case of that other, more famous, asthmatic, Marcel Proust.
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References
1.Mark Jackson used the case of Proust to introduce a full-scale examination of the history of the illness. Jackson M. “Prologue”. In: Asthma: the biography. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press .
2.Foucault M. La naissance de la clinique: une archéologie d’un regard . Paris, France: PUF, 1963. For a discussion on Foucault’s contribution to the historiography of ‘la clinique’, see Hannaway C and Berge AL (eds) Constructing Paris medicine . Amsterdam and Atlanta: Clio Medica, 1998, especially pp.31–34 .
3.Ackerknecht EH. Medicine at the Paris hospital, 1794–1848 . Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967 .
4.See for instance, Warner JH. Against the spirit of system: the French impulse in nineteenth-century American medicine . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998 .
5.Jackson. Asthma: the biography , p. 84 .
6.Jackson M. “Divine Stramonium”: the rise and fall of smoking for asthma. Medical History 2010; 54: 171–194 .
7.Ibid .
8.Jackson. Asthma , p. 96 .
9.Clinique Médicale de l’Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. Paris: Masson, 1963. Gout, rheumatism, epilepsy, hives, eczema, and stomach disorders were some of them .
10.Jackson, Asthma , p. 95 .
11.Bariety M and Coury C. Histoire de la Médecine. Paris: Fayard, 1963, pp.616–618 .
12.Trousseau A. Clinique Médicale (t. I), pp. 40–41 .
13.Ibid., pp. 33 and 39–40 .
14.Ibid., p. 58 .
15.Trousseau A. Clinique Médicale (t. II) pp. 542–543. This lecture was first published in the Gazette des hôpitaux, 26 August 1858 .
16.Trousseau A. Clinique Médicale (t. II) p. 552 .
17.Davies HM. Emile and Isaac Pereire: Bankers, Socialists, and Sephardic Jews in nineteenth-century France . Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2015 .
18.Mérimée P. Correspondance genérale . In: Parturier M (ed.) É. Privat (t. X). Toulouse, 1956, p.79 .
19.Trousseau A. Clinique Médicale (t. II) pp. 552–553 .
20.His father died at the age of thirty-five when Emile was five years-old, possibly from typhoid; his mother died in 1829 at the age of forty-nine from what was probably heart disease. See Davies, Emile and Isaac Pereire , chs. 1 and 2 .
21.Ibid., especially chs 6 and 7 .
22.AFP, letter to a friend, 1820, in Bordeaux informing him of Télèphe’s death .
23.Trousseau A. Clinique Médicale (t. II) p. 552 .
24.Ibid. See also Davies, Emile and Isaac Pereire , pp. 89–90 .
25.AFP. Emile to Herminie, 30 September 1864, from Arcachon .
26.Ibid., 18 January 1865, from Paris; 29 September 1866, from Bayonne; 2 September 1873, from Arcachon .
27.Jackson M. Allergy: the history of a modern malady . London, England: Reaktion Books, 2006, p.27 .
28.AFP, 28 August 1858 .
29.Ibid., .
30.Ibid., 10 September 1865, from Bayonne, ‘J’avais été un peu oppressé.’ .
31.Ibid., Emile to Herminie, 5 September 1860, from Arcachon .
32.Ibid., 5 September 1860 from Bordeaux; 2 December 1872, from Arcachon .
33.Ibid., 1 September 1863, from Bordeaux .
34.Ibid., 10 September 1865, from Bayonne .
35.Ibid., Herminie to her son, Henry, 28 May 1864, from Arcachon .
36.Mérimée. Correspondance (vol. XII), p.79, 2 March 1864, from Cannes .
37.Trousseau A. Clinique Médicale (t. II) p. 552 .
38.AFP, Emile to Herminie, 5 September 1860, from Arcachon: ‘I avoided sleep and I was not suffocating [‘oppressé’] the whole day.’ .
39.See for instance Sakula A. A history of asthma. The Journal of the Royal College of Physicians 1988; 22: 40 .
40.I thank Mark Jackson for this information. Armand Trousseau also referred to a patient who, circa 1825, had a ‘vésicatoire [which] seemed to me to be gangrenous’. See Clinique Médicale (t. I), pp. 20–21. Brewis RAL in his edited Classic Papers in Asthma , London: Science Press, 1999, vol. 2. “Introduction”, noted that ‘the term “vesicatory” sometimes indicated a corrosive skin irritant used to produce vesicles and excoriation’, but may also ‘refer to the use of cupping, an ancient practice in which a heated receptacle is applied to the skin.’ .
41.Aufan R. La Naissance d’Arcachon (1823–1857): “de la forêt à la ville .” Société Historique et Archéologique d’Arcachon et du Pays de Buch: Arcachon, France, 1994, p. 60 .
42.See for instance Barnes DS. The making of a social disease: tuberculosis in nineteenth-century France . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press .
43.AFP, Aristide Pereyra to Emile Pereire, 19 April 1853 .
44.Christophe Bouneau, “La Contribution des chemins de fer au développement touristique d’Arcachon de 1841 au second conflit mondial”, in Congrès d’études régionales, D’Arcachon à Andernos: regards sur le Bassin , actes du XLVIIIe Congrès d’études régionales de la Fédération historique du sud-ouest tenu à Arcachon et Andernos, avril 1996. Bordeaux, France: Fédération Historique Du sud-ouest, 1997, especially pp. 265–275 .
45.A Garner. A shifting shore: locals, outsiders, and the transformation of a French fishing town . Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005, pp. 120–123 .
46.AFP, Emile Pereire to Herminie, 14 August 1865, from Arcachon .
47.Ibid., Emile to Herminie, 14 August 1865, from Arcachon .
48.Ibid., to Henry Pereire, 16 August 1870, from Arcachon .
49.Trousseau A. Notice médicale sur les bains de mer de Croisic et sur l’effet thérapeutique des eaux mères, de l’hydrothérapie marine et des bains de sable administrés à l’établissement du Croisic. Labé: Paris, 1855 .
50.Trousseau A. Clinique Médicale (t. II), p.557 .
51.Medical specialization in France is addressed in Weisz G. Divide and conquer: a comparative history of medical specialization. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2006, p.11 .
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54.Jackson M. Divine Stramonium. Medical History 2010; 54: 171–194 .
55.Trousseau A. Clinique Médicale (t. II), pp. 592–593 .
56.Ibid., p. 589 .
57.AFP, Emile to Herminie, 5 September 1860, from Arcachon .
58.Ibid., 25 May 1864 .
59.Mérimée, Correspondance (vol. XII), p. 79 .
60.Trousseau A. Clinique Médicale (t. II) pp. 588–591 .
61.Jackson. Asthma , pp. 110–111 .
62.As Trousseau described it, ‘névrose diathésique’, or constitutional neurosis. See Clinique Médicale (t. II) pp. 581–585 .
63.Jackson. Asthma, pp. 6 .
64.Martin-Fugier A. Convivialité masculine au XIXe siècle: les dîners Bixio et Magny. Romantisme 2007; 3: 49–59; Goncourt journals; Journal d’Eugène Delacroix, Introduction et Notes par André Joubin (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1950), e.g. 10 January 1853, 16 March 1858 .
65.Weisz G. Reconstructing Paris medicine. In: Hannaway C and Berge AL (eds) Paris Medicine op cit., Essay Review in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine 2001; 75: 113 .
66.His wife died in Paris in January 1874. While it is not certain that Pereire was at her bedside, at some point he did leave Arcachon for Paris where he died in January 1875 .
67.Daily Evening Bulletin , San Francisco, 3 February 1875 (19th century US Newspapers, Gale)
68.Edouard Drumont in L’Avenir d’Arcachon, 15 January 1875; Alfred Neymarck, “M. Emile Pereire”, Le Rentier, 1875 [undated]. Both of these cuttings are in the AFP .
69.H. Castille. Les Fréres Péreire. Paris: E. Dentu, 1861, p. 10 .
70.Jackson. Asthma , pp. 98–99 .