Jean-Nicolas Corvisart

Life & Legacy

Jean-Nicolas Corvisart-Desmarets (15 February 1755 – 18 September 1821) was a French medical doctor.
Born in the village of Dricourt (now in Ardennes), Corvisart studied from 1777 at the Ecole de Médecine in Paris, later qualifying as docteur régent of the Faculté de Paris (1782). In 1797, Corvisart began to teach at the Collège de France, where he gained a reputation as an expert in cardiology. Among his students were René Laennec, Guillaume Dupuytren, Xavier Bichat and Pierre Bretonneau.
Corvisart resurrected percussion during the French Revolution after it had fallen out of fashion. He emphasized the study of symptoms and examined postmortem evidence as well. In 1808 Corvisart's translation of Leopold von Auenbrugg's Inventum Novum from Latin into French was published. Corvisart was especially fond of Auenbrugg's use of chest percussion as a diagnostic tool, and began to perfect the technique. In the meantime, Corvisart had become since 1804 the primary physician of Napoléon Bonaparte, who he would continue to attend to until Bonaparte's exile to St. Helena Island, October 1815. In 1820 he was made a member of Académie Nationale de Médecine. He died the following year at Courbevoie.