(BORDEAU, THÉOPHILE de).

Recherches sur le pouls, par rapport aux crises.

Paris, de Bure, 1756. 8vo. Beautiful cont. full mottled calf w. five raised bands on richly gilt spine, gilt red title-label. A very nice copy w. only minor occasional brownspotting. xxviij, 483, (2, -errata & Approbation) pp.

The rare first edition of Bordeau's important investigations on the pulse which has caused the pulse to be taken by applying the tips of the four fingers to the hollow of the radius.
The work was later printed in Diderot's "Encyclopédie".

Théophile de Bordeau (1722-1776) was an important French physician of the 18th century. Due to his great abilities and interest in his patient, Bordeau attracted a large practice as an attending physician at La Charité in Paris. This aroused jealousy with many of his colleagues, and due to a conspiracy his name was removed from the list of Paris physicians in 1761; he defended himself vigorously, however, and was reinstated in 1764, allowing him to care for his many devoted patients, among which many impotant persons of the 18th century were to be found, e.g. Madame du Barry.

Bordeau is considered the founder of modern hydrotherapy, and it was through him that the baths of the Pyrenees became known throughout the south of France and Paris. He wrote a number of important an influential works on medicine. He is considered a precursor in what was later called endocrinology, and he demonstrated that secretion is the active elaboration of a new product separate from the constituents of the blood. "Semeiology also interested Bordeu. His "Recherches sur les crises" appeared in Diderot's "Encyclopédie", as did his "Recherches sur le pouls par rapport aux crises." Both mark him as a clinician of the first order who knew how to obtain a large number of diagnostic and prognostic facts from an examination. Since Bordeu, physicians take the pulse by applying the tips of the four fingers to the hollow of the radius."

Order-nr.: 35560