In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • An Early Report of Familial Bronchiectasis
  • Saul Jarcho* (bio)

Francesco Torti (1658–1741) is famous because of his book, Therapeutice specialis ad febres quasdam perniciosas (Special treatment for certain harmful fevers), first published in 1712 and reissued repeatedly until 1928. 1 He received the doctorate in medicine at Bologna in 1678. In 1685 he was appointed to the second professorship in medicine at the newly reconstituted University of Modena. Much later in life, suffering from vertigo and other ailments, he retired, but his wisdom and experience were in demand. As a result, numerous physicians and occasional laymen in northern and central Italy, and several outside Italy, wrote to him for advice. Very few visited him.

Torti accumulated the copies of his case reports (most of which were written in Italian, with a few in Latin). These consultation records usually, but not always, consisted of a letter describing the patient and the clinical problem, and Torti’s reply. In some instances the petitioner’s letter is missing. The replies were dictations, almost always initialed by Torti. The entire collection of 303 letters is kept at the Archivio di Stato in Modena. A separate collection containing 26 additional letters, written mainly in Latin, is kept at the University of Modena. [End Page 291]

In the combined series there is a total of 329 letters. It is the 325th (i.e., the 22d letter of the second series) that forms the basis of the present investigation. 2 The text under discussion is titled Tussis gentilitia diu noctuq[ue] affligens (Familial cough, harassing by day and night), and consists only of Torti’s reply, which runs to two paragraphs. It states that he had read very carefully and had understood adequately what the patient had written in French about the illness, and he had not found in that report anything beyond what he had understood previously from the patient’s conversation.

The patient had coughed since childhood. The same disturbance had occurred in his ancestors for an unknown number of generations. The sputum was very thick, but it is not otherwise described in the written text (although it may well have been described during the preceding oral interview), nor is the sex of the afflicted kinsmen mentioned. Both Torti and his patient recognized that tuberculosis was not present. The remainder of the brief report is devoted to treatment.

According to a slightly obscure statement in Fielding Garrison’s history of medicine, bronchiectasis was first described and differentiated by René Laennec 3 but was “first noted by his assistant Cayol in 1808.” 4 Ample biographical information about Cayol is given in the third edition of August Hirsch’s Biographisches Lexikon, but—surprisingly—no mention is made of his association with Laennec. 5 Hirsch does however state that Cayol published many articles (Aufsätzen) in Jean-Jacques Leroux’s Journal [de Médicine, Chirurgie, Pharmacie] in 1807, 1808, and 1811. 6

We are left with the small fact that Torti’s patient spoke French. He could have been a French-speaking Swiss, an affiliation consonant with the fact that much of the important research on hereditary bronchiectasis [End Page 292] was indeed to be done in Switzerland, notably by Manes Kartagener. 7 To this we must add the valuable note on bronchiectasis in the treatise of Victor McKusick and his colleagues. 8

Saul Jarcho

Saul Jarcho, a retired internist, has contributed numerous articles and review to the Bulletin since 1941, and to other publications, including the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, of which he was editor from 1967 to 1976. Recently he completed a translation of the consultation reports of Francesco Torti (1658–1741), which is awaiting publication. He was President of the American Association for the History of Medicine from 1968 to 1970. His address is: 11 West 69th Street, New York, NY 10023 (e-mail: IrmJar@aol.com).

Footnotes

* I thank Dr. James Cassedy of the National Library of Medicine and Dr. Edward Morman of the New York Academy of Medicine for their cooperation in the examination of bibliographic minutiae.

1. The details can be found in Saul Jarcho, Quinine’s Predecessor: Francesco Torti and the Early History of Cinchona (Baltimore...

Share