Recherches Sur La Respiration "Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires Des Seances De L'Academie Des Sciences" 1855

Paris: Mallet-Bachelier, Imprimeur-Libraire,. Very Good. 1855. First Edition. Hardcover. 5 pages; Paris: Very Good. 1855. First Edition. Tome XLI, 17 decembre 1855; 5 pages; An extract from "Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de L'Academie des Sciences" -- Early 20th century pamphlet binding, linen-backed boards, old blue paper wrapper retained with neat ink ms. Identification of the extract in tiny letters. WIth the bookplate of the [U. S. ] Army Medical Library / Washington DC mounted to the modern paste-down endpaper. This is stamped "WITHDRAWN / NAT[IONAL] LIB[RARY] OF MED[ICINE]. Older oval stamp in pale blue ink on the first page: "Surgeon General's Office / LIBRARY / Washington DC. " This stamp has the manuscript accession number: "13963." The author, Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille, earned two places in Garrison-Morton. The text gives a assessment of his place in medical history: "Poiseuille was the first after Stephen Hales to make any important addition to the knowledge of the physiology of circulation..." In his graduation thesis for the degree of D. Sc. At the École Polytechnique in Paris in 1828, Poiseuille detailed his invention, the hemomanometer, a mercury manometer, which was a great improvement on the long tube used by Hales to measure blood pressure. Already, at this early stage in his forty year career, Poiseuille was concerned with human respiration, having observed that blood-pressure rises and falls on expiration and inspiration. Between 1838 and 1846 formulated and published, Poiseuille's law -- describing and quantifying laminar flow, which is non-turbulent flow of liquids through pipes of uniform section, such as blood flow in capillaries and veins. Poiseuille's equation (at a given temperature water flow through tubes of very fine bore is inversely proportional to the length of the tube and directly proportional to the pressure gradient and to the fourth power of the tube diameter) also applies to many sorts of liquids, but it is easy to understand why he continually concerned himself with human blood flow and the respiratory system. The lungs, after all, represent the location where the circulatory system crucially interacts with the respiratory system. It is interesting to note that the bookplate and two stamps on this slender volume represent the changing names for the national collection of medical reference books. The Library of the Surgeon General's Office had modest beginnings in 1836 when Joseph Lovell, then Surgeon General, purchased medical reference books and journals for his office. The next stop for a physical repository of the vastly enlarged Library was in a Washington location which was made available in the aftermath of a great tragedy. Ford's Theatre in Washington was closed and remodeled after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated there on April 14, 1865. The Surgeon General's Library was housed in that building from 1867 to 1887. In that later year, the continually enlarging library was moved to a large brick building on Washington's Mall -- a small picture of this building is shown on the bookplate mounted to the front endpaper of this volume. That building, the Army Medical Museum and Library, was emptied in 1956, the year that the Library was transfered to the newly-created National Library of Medicine. After the building, at 7th and South B Street, now called Independence Avenue, was torn down in 1969, the site is now home to the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum. .; Science and History of Science, French Language and Literature, Most Recent Listing .