François-Joseph Double

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François-Joseph Double
Born11 March 1776
Died12 June 1842(1842-06-12) (aged 66)
Paris, France
Resting placePère Lachaise Cemetery
OccupationPhysician

François-Joseph Double (1776–1842) was a French physician and co-founder of the Académie Nationale de Médecine.[1][2][3][4][5]

Biography[edit]

Early life[edit]

He was born on 11 March 1776 in Verdun-sur-Garonne, Tarn-et-Garonne, France.[4] His family, the Double family, had been ennobled in 1378.[3] His grandfather and father were both Apothecaries.[4] He studied in Montpellier, where he was taught in Latin.[4] He moved to Paris in 1803.[4]

Career[edit]

He started his career as an apothecary in Paris.[4] He served as a physician in the French-Spanish War of 1793.[4]

As a physician, he developed the accurate observation of the clinical signs of illness, and studied the unaided auscultation of respiratory and cardiac ailments.[2] He also described tubal breathing and pulmonary rales or crackles.[2] He listened to the heart and focused on problems of the heartbeat and unusual sounds, but he failed to link them to any specific ailment.[2] Shortly after, René Laennec (1781-1826) invented the stethoscope and developed aided auscultation.[2] He wrote two books and many reports, for example about diseases like croup and cholera.[4]

In 1832 he co-founded the Académie Nationale de Médecine with Antoine Portal (1742-1832).[3] King Louis Philippe I (1773-1850), who reigned from 1830 to 1848, offered him another peerage should he renounce his medical practise, but he refused.[4]

Death[edit]

He died on 12 June 1842 in Paris, and was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Legacy[edit]

His family owns the winery Château de Beaupré in Saint-Cannat, started in 1890 by Baron Emile Double (1869-1938).[3]

Bibliography[edit]

Primary sources[edit]

  • Traité du croup (1811).
  • Séméiologie générale ou traité des signes et de leur valeur dans les maladies (3 volumes, Paris, Croullebois).

Secondary sources[edit]

  • Michel Suspène, Docteur François-Joseph Double, un itinéraire médical, en hommage à l'Académie de médecine (CDDP de Tarn-et-Garonne, Montauban, 2002).

References[edit]

  1. ^ Domenico Gabrielli, Dictionnaire historique du cimetière du Père-Lachaise XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, Paris, éd. de l'Amateur, 2002, 334 p.
  2. ^ a b c d e Suspène M (2007). "[François Joseph Double and auscultation]". Hist Sci Med. 41 (4): 379–84. PMID 18450297.
  3. ^ a b c d "Château de Beaupré: History". Archived from the original on 2013-10-15. Retrieved 2013-04-11.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Père Lachaise
  5. ^ Olivier Walusinski (ed.), Mystery of Yawning in Physiology and Disease, Karger Publishers, 2010, p. 12 [1]