CHAPTER XI 

 THE CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN SCIENTIFIC MEDICINE 



ALTHOUGH Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul, was not 

 lacking in self-appreciation, he probably did not realize 

 that in selecting a physician for his o\vn needs he was 

 markedly influencing the progress of medical science as 

 a whole. Yet so strangely are cause and effect ad- 

 justed in human affairs that this simple act of the First 

 Consul had that very unexpected effect. For the man 

 chosen was the envoy of a new method in medical prac- 

 tice, and the fame which came to him through being 

 physician to the First Consul, and subsequently to the 

 Emperor, enabled him to promulgate the method in a 

 way otherwise impracticable. Hence the indirect but 

 telling value to medical science of Napoleon's selection. 



The physician in question was Jean Nicolas de Corvi- 

 sart. His novel method was nothing more startling 

 than the now familiar procedure of tapping the chest of 

 a patient to elicit sounds indicative of diseased tissues 

 within. Every one has seen this done commonly 

 enough in our day, but at the beginning of the century 

 Corvisart, and perhaps some of his pupils, were proba- 

 bly the only physicians in the world who resorted to 



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