(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
(Coming from a long line of doctors, it seemed natural tha...)
Coming from a long line of doctors, it seemed natural that Edward Livingston Trudeau would follow in that path. Never did he dream that only shortly after returning from his honeymoon in 1871, he would be diagnosed with tuberculosis. Despite being devastated by the news, he spent the rest of his life in the research and treatment of tuberculosis, establishing the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium at Saranac Lake. His laboratory there was the first in the United States dedicated to a better understanding of the disease. In this intensely interesting, inspiring, and often witty memoir, Dr. Trudeau relates the trials and victories of his professional and personal life. His long marriage was one of the bedrocks of his life. Among his most celebrated patients was author Robert Louis Stevenson, with whom he became friends. He also mentions an evening with Stevenson and Libby Custer (widow of General George Armstrong Custer) that was highly entertaining. As for living a life with illness, Trudeau says: "I have had ample opportunity in the past forty years to get used to illness and suffering; but it took me a long time to learn, imperfectly though it be, that acquiescence is the only way for the tuberculous invalid to conquer fate. To cease to rebel and struggle, and to learn to be content with part of a loaf when one cannot have a whole loaf, though a hard lesson to learn, is good philosophy for the tuberculous invalid, and to his astonishment he often finds that what he considers the half-loaf, when acquiesced in, proves most satisfying."
Edward Livingston Trudeau was an American physician.
Background
Edward Livingston Trudeauwas born on November 15, 1915 in New York City. He was the third child of James and Céphise (Berger) Trudeau. His father, the grandson of Zenon Trudeau, lieutenant governor of upper Louisiana from 1792 to 1799, was a Confederate officer, a friend and companion of John J. Audubon, a sculptor of some ability, and a physician.
Soon after the boy's birth his parents separated. His mother returned to Paris, with her father, François Eloi Berger, the son of a long line of physicians and a successful practising physician of New York.
Education
There young Trudeau lived until his eighteenth year, studying at the Lycée Bonaparte. Returning to New York, he prepared to enter the United States Naval Academy, but, when his brother developed tuberculosis, he resigned in order to nurse him until he died.
Tiring of the work in the School of Mines of Columbia College, now part of the School of Engineering of Columbia University, and caring little for the life of a stockbroker, he began in 1868 the study of medicine and was graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, now a part of Columbia University.
Career
After a short hospital experience he began practice on Long Island but soon, in 1872, removed to New York, associated himself with Fessenden Nott Otis, and engaged in teaching and dispensary work.
Infected no doubt by his brother, he developed in 1873 rather extensive pulmonary tuberculosis, which led him to the Adirondacks, where he continued to live, considering himself always an exile from New York.
In 1880 he began to devote more time to medical practice, at Paul Smiths in the summer and in Saranac Lake during the winter. He was interested chiefly in two phases of tuberculosis, early diagnosis and the discovery of a cure, both closely related to his consuming passion, aiding in recovery from tuberculosis. The cure he sought in the laboratory; early diagnosis and treatment he pursued in the sanatorium. He was a keen diagnostician, his grasp of prognosis was as excellent as it was cautious.
He published little upon clinical tuberculosis, much from the laboratory. He spoke optimistically, he wrote guardedly, with the result he had little to retract. Impressed with the need of caring for patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and small means, stimulated by an article by Herman Brehmer, in 1884 he established on sixteen acres, bought and presented to him by Adirondack guides, lifelong friends, the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium, now the Trudeau Sanatorium, the first in America.
For thirty years, practically unaided, he met the yearly deficit, ultimately $30, 000, by soliciting contributions and by donations from his own modest income, and he left an endowment fund of $600, 000.
At his death the sanatorium accommodated 150 patients and consisted of 36 buildings on 60 acres. He was already familiar with the work of Pasteur and Tyndall, when a translation of Robert Koch's paper on the etiology of tuberculosis came into his hands. This led to the establishment of a small, very primitive laboratory in his home, eventually causing a fire that destroyed his house in 1893 and prompted George C. Cooper to build the present Saranac Laboratory in 1894. There the first immunity experiments in tuberculosis in America were performed, various substances tested on animals, and in a hole nearby the beneficial influence of fresh air on tuberculous rabbits was controlled.
Among his earlier publications were "An Experimental Study of Preventive Inoculation in Tuberculosis" (Medical Record, Nov. 22, 1890) and "The Treatment of Experimental Tuberculosis by Koch's Tuberculin, Hunter's Modification and Other Products of the Tubercle-Bacillus" (Medical News, Sept. 3, 1892, and also in Transactions of the Association of American Physicians, vol. VII, 1892, pp. 99-101). Two of his later studies were reported as "Artificial Immunity in Experimental Tuberculosis" (Ibid. , vol. XVIII, 1903, p. 97 and in New York Medical Journal, July 18, 1903) and "Two Experiments in Artificial Immunity against Tuberculosis" (Medical News, Sept. 30, 1905, and Transactions of the National Association for Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis 1905, 1906). In 1915 An Autobiography was published posthumously (title page 1916).
Strongly influenced after the death of his brother by broad and tolerant religious views, he led in the organizations of the churches at Paul Smiths and in Saranac Lake, in the affairs of which he took deep interest until his death.
He died in Saranac Lake and was buried at St. Johns-in-the-Wilderness, at Paul Smiths.
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Membership
He became in 1904 the first president of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, later the National Tuberculosis Association; in 1905 president of the Association of American Physicians; in 1910 president of the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, where, too weak to be heard, he spoke on "Optimism in Medicine" (for extensive quotation see Chalmers, post, introduction).
Personality
His most striking characteristics were his personal charm, his optimism, his wonderful never flagging enthusiasm, his wide sympathies, his choice of forceful picturesque diction in speech and writing, his ability to interest others, to make and keep friends, his love of people. Such characteristics made him a keen scientist and a great physician.
Interests
Having inherited a modest income, he fished and hunted until 1880.
Connections
He was steadied in his determination for a career by his desire to win the confidence, approbation, and love of Charlotte G. Beare of Douglaston, Long Island. He was married to her on June 29, 1871, and in his autobiography he repeatedly acknowledged her influence throughout his life.
Of his four children, one, a physician, survived him, another boy died in infancy, a daughter was claimed by the disease he was struggling to control, and in 1906 his eldest son died suddenly while convalescing from pneumonia. Trudeau never recovered from this blow, and gradually his disease, long quiescent, becoming more active, required collapse therapy that for a time relieved him.
His descendants include cartoonist Garry Trudeau, a great grandson.