Manuscript notebook of lectures in an unidentified hand, plus printed "Formulaire". Culerier lectures insc. to P. Ricord by G. Rattiere[?]. Ricord's ownership stamp

Landré-Beauvais, Augustin (1772-1840). (1) Le cours de M. Landré Beauvais sur la seméiotique en l'an 12. Manuscript in an unidentified hand. N.p., 1803-4. 180pp. (2) Landré-Beauvais. Une partie du cours sur les maladies des femmes par le même. Manuscript in the same hand. N.p., n.d. 40pp. [With:] (3) Cullerier, [Michel] (1758-1827). Cours de maladies vénériennes . . . commence le 21 ventose an 13. Manuscript in the same hand. 153, [17]pp. Paris, 1805. Title-leaf inscribed to Philippe Ricord: "Post tenebras lux. A mon maître le Professeur Ricord témoinage de respect et d'attachement sincère G Battiere[?] Paris 14 avril 1859." [With:] (4) [Cullerier.] Formulaire à l'usage de l'Hospice des Vénériens de Paris. 49pp. N.p., n.d. [Paris, ca. 1804]. Together 4 works in 1 (3 manuscript, 1 printed). 190 x 125 mm. 19th century quarter calf, boards, vellum corners, paper label with title in ink on the front cover, spine missing, some rubbing and wear. Minor foxing but very good. From the library of Philippe Ricord.

Interesting volume containing manuscript transcripts of three French medical lectures from the turn of the nineteenth century. As far as we have been able to determine, none of these three works ever appeared in print. The first author represented in this collection, Augustin Landré-Beauvais, was a professor of clinical medicine at Paris's Salpêtrière Hospital who had studied under Bichat. He is best known today for giving the first reasonably accurate account of rheumatoid arthritis (see Garrison-Morton.com 4490), but in his own time he was perhaps better known for his Séméiotique ou traité des signes des maladies (1809), setting forth his medical "theory of signs" instructing doctors in how to determine the hidden cause of a particular disease from the evidence presented by its symptoms. No. (1) above records Landré-Beauvais's course on medical semeiotics given in 1803-4 ("An XII"), while no. (2) records part of his course on the diseases of women.

The second author in this collection, Michel Cullerier, was the first surgeon-in-chief at Paris's Hôpital des Vénériens, a post he occupied from 1782 to 1827; he also taught courses on the treatment of venereal disease. Cullerier "advanced the theory of a primitive syphilis (characterized by the chancre) and a constitutional syphilis (characterized by the syphilides and subsequently by the later manifestations which had been remarked on at all periods), the idea being that the former could progress as far as a cure without the latter even appearing. This same doctor was amongst the first to specify the length of the incubation period, estimating that it was between three and five days until the initial chancre appeared" (Quétel, History of Syphilis, p. 109). This volume contains a manuscript record of one of his courses on venereal disease, given in 1805 (no. [3]); it also includes the second printed edition of his Formulaire à l'usage de l'Hospice des Vénériens de Paris, originally published in the mid-1790s.