Popis: |
The need to publish monographs on diseases affecting the diverse systems of the human body clearly dates from the second half of the 19th century, when medical and surgical specialties were beginning to develop. In pneumology, the 17th and 18th century literature was dominated by phthisiological treatises because of the high mortality due to the terrible spread of tuberculosis, which upstaged all other diseases of the era. Such treatises therefore did not cover the full scope of respiratory disease. An exception was R.T.H. Laennec s first 1819 edition of Traite de l auscultation mediate et des maladies des poumons et de cœur (Treatise on mediate auscultation and diseases of the lungs and heart), considered the first serious attempt to deal with the subspecialty of cardiopulmonology as a whole. Few, however, are familiar with the 1795 Madrid publication of what was probably the first Spanish monograph on specifically thoracic diseases and one of the first in world medical literature. I refer to the Treatise on Common Chest Diseases, Acute and Chronic by Don Antonio Corbella y Fondebila (Figure 1). Accordingly, the purpose of the present paper is to bring to light the most important aspects of this treatise. Little has been published about Corbella y Fondebila. Seemingly he came from Barcelona and was a student at the Royal College of Naval Surgeons in Cadiz, entering in 1767. He was posted to America as a lieutenant protomedico — a title referring to his appointment to the King s own staff of physicians — in the provinces of the Rio de la Plata, Paraguay, and Tucuman. In 1794 he published Disertacion medico quirugica (Dissertation on Medicine and Surgery). 2 His 1795 Treatise on Chest Diseases, the subject of this paper, was dedicated to Francisco Martinez Sobral, chief physician to the King of Spain. In the introduction to this work, Corbella y Fondebila addresses the public to explain what motivated him to write the book |