ing in
self-appreciation, he probably did not realize that in selecting a
physician for his own needs he was markedly influencing the progress
of medical science as a whole. Yet so strangely are cause and effect
adjusted 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 practice, 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 Corvisart. 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 probably the only physicians in the world who resorted to
this simple and useful procedure. Hence Napoleon's surprise when, on
calling in Corvisart, after becoming somewhat dissatisfied with
his other physicians Pinel and Portal, his physical condition was
interrogated in this strange manner. With characteristic shrewdness
Bonaparte saw the utility of the method, and the physician who thus
attempted to substitute scientific method for guess-work in the
diagnosis of disease at once found favor in his eyes and was installed
as his regular medical adviser.

For fifteen years before this Corvisart had practised percussion, as
the chest-tapping method is called, without succeeding in convincing the
profession of its value. The method itself, it should be added, had not
originated with Corvisart, nor did the French physician for a moment
claim it as his own. The true originator of the practice was the German
physician Avenbrugger, who published a book about it as early as 1761.
This book had even been translated into French, then the language of
international communication everywhere, by Roziere de la Chassagne, of
Montpellier, in 1770; but no one other than Corvisart appears to
have paid any attention to either original or translation. It was far
otherwise, however, when Corvisart translated Avenbrugger's work anew,
with important additions of his own, in 1808.

"I know very well how little reputation is allotted to translator and
co