Bazin, Antoine Pierre Ernes.

600 pages of autograph manuscripts, with 12 watercolors and drawings on lung anatomy and physiology.

      circa18361842., Paris: - Circa 600 Pages of Unpublished Autograph Manuscripts on the Anatomy and Physiology of the Lungs and the Physiology of Respiration, with Twelve Watercolor Paintings by Albert Jacquemart, from an Almost Completely Undocumented Period in Bazin's LifeBazin, Antoine-Pierre-Ernest (1807-78). A collection of autograph manuscripts, drawings and watercolor paintings on the anatomy and physiology of the lungs and the physiology of respiration, as listed below. [Paris, 1836-c. 1842] Various sizes. 1 ms. in original wrappers, torn & chipped; the remaining mss. in original unbound state, some soiling and browning, edges of some leaves a little frayed, a few marginal tears. 5 of the watercolors mounted; the remainder loose. Enclosed in two cloth drop-back boxes. Bazin, the son and grandson of physicians, was born in 1807 in the small town of St. Brice-sous-Bois. He studied medicine in Paris, where he impressed everyone with his brilliance: "named successively a hospital extern and intern, he was taught by Dupuytren, Honore, Rostan, Bricheteau, Delarocque, Maury, Biett, and crowned his internship by obtaining the gold medal at the end of a remarkable examination" (Baudot, p. 176). He received his doctorate in medicine in 1834 with a thesis entitled Recherches sur les lesions de poumon dans les fievres dites essentielles (Researches on lesions of the lung in "essential" fevers), and might then have begun on a career commensurate with his remarkable abilities. However, Bazin was unfortunately possessed of a difficult and overbearing personality, and his "utter lack of tact in dealing with influential colleagues" (Besnier, quoted in Crissy & Parrish, p. 150) caused him to passed over in the agrege examinations of 1835 and 1838, which prevented him from obtaining a teaching post in a university or lycee. To Bazin these failures were so discouraging that he abandoned all further efforts toward obtaining a teaching position, instead spending the next several years in relative poverty and obscurity, struggling to advance his medical career both in private practice and at various hospitals. Bazin also attempted during this time to found two medical periodicals-- l'Institut medical (first issue 1839) and Repertoire des etudes medicales (first issue 1848); however, both of these ventures were almost immediate failures, due largely to Bazin's lack of capital. This difficult period in Bazin's life ended in 1847, when he was prevailed upon to accept a post at the Hopital St. Louis; he remained there until his retirement at age 65, and it is there that he began the brilliant and influential dermatological studies for which he is now known. He constructed an elaborate "diathetic" system of dermatologic thought based on the idea that skin disorders were not diseases as such but only the visible manifestations of a few underlying pathological states; this theory enjoyed wide acceptance in France and Great Britain prior to the rise of the germ theory of disease in the 1870s. Bazin published over a dozen books on dermatological subjects, the most important being his influential Lecons theoriques et cliniques sur les affections cutanees de nature arthritique et dartreuse (1860); these, coupled with his great skills as a clinician and teacher, made him one of the great dermatological authorities of his age. His name survives today in the term "Bazin's disease," an alternative name for erythema induratum (see G-M 4051). Although quite prolific in the years after 1850, when his fortunes were secure, Bazin published almost nothing in the unsettled and virtually undocumented period of his life between 1835 and 1847. A search of the sources available to us, including the online databases, NUC and contemporary obituaries (see below), has turned up references only to the two failed periodicals, his agrege theses (Quels sont les caracteres distinctifs de la contagion et de l'infection [1835] and Determiner ce qu'il faut entendre par maladies lymphatiques [1838]), and tw [Attributes: Hard Cover]