Flint, A
NAME:
Flint, Austin
ACHIEVEMENTS:
Discovery of the Flint (heart) murmur.
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
20 October 1812, Petersham, MA
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
13 March 1886, New York, NY. Aged 74
DISCIPLINE:
Physician
FIELD:
Medicine
LANGUAGE:
English
PARENTS:
Father: Joseph Henshaw Fling
Mother: Hannah Reed
SIBLINGS:
???
SPOUSE:
Anne Skillings
CHILDREN:
1 son: Austin
EDUCATION:
Amherst College
Harvard Medical School
MAJOR WORK:
“Physical Exploration and Diagnosis of Diseases Affecting the Respiratory Organs” (1856)
“Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Medicine” (1866)
LIFE AND TIMES:
Flint followed family tradition by becoming a physician and although he did not (unlike many of his contemporaries) go to Paris for his post graduate studies, he learned from teachers like James Jackson Snr. at Harvard about the new clinical practices <influenced by> Louis* and others were introducing into French medicine at the big Paris hospitals.
This taught Flint to make physical diagnoses based on clinical observation, and he was familiar with new diagnostic tools like the technique of percussion (chest-tapping) pioneered by <influenced by> Auenbrugger* and the use of <influenced by> Laennec’s* new stethoscope.
After graduating in 1833 Flint began practising as a physician in Boston and Northampton. He gained wider notice through publishing articles in the press, including an article in 1841 that was significant for the treating of malaria by quinine therapy. In 1843, in his capacity as health officer for Erie County, he was called in to advise on an epidemic of fever in the village of North Boston, New York. In his report he suggested that the fever had been introduced by a passing stranger.
His experience at North Boston inspired Flint to begin a lifelong study of the diagnosis and epidemiology of fevers. In 1844 he was appointed professor of medicine at the newly created Rush Medical College in Chicago. He taught one term before going to Buffalo, New York where he resumed his medical practice.
In 1846 he founded the “Buffalo Medical Journal” and in the same year was appointed chairman of the National Medical Convention committee on medical education. Together with Frank H Hamilton and James P White he founded the Buffalo Medical College. In 1850 he proposed that the variations in pitch heard in the sounds detected by the stethoscope would be a helpful means of diagnosis for chest and heart disease. His paper on this subject won the first prize awarded by the newly created American Medical Association in 1852.
In the same year, Flint moved to the University of Louisville, Kentucky to become professor in the medical department. At Louisville, he introduced the novel practise of teaching normal sounds (where no disease was present) by getting students to practise auscultation by stethoscope on each other in class. Flint summed up his pioneering ideas on teaching physical diagnosis in “Physical Exploration and Diagnosis of Disease Affecting the Respiratory Organs” published in 1856.
From 1856-59 he taught in Buffalo and acted as president of the Buffalo Medical Society. In 1858 he transferred to the recently established New Orleans School of Medicine. It was in New Orleans that Flint first described a particular sound heard during auscultation and now known as the “Austin Flint murmur”: a heart murmur that indicates regurgitation of blood from the aorta into the heart before the ventricles contract.
When Civil War broke out, Flint moved to New York where he joined other physicians in establishing a new medical school, in association with Bellevue Hospital, which became a centre of excellence. In 1866 Flint published “Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Medicine” which became the most popular medical book in English.
He continued his support for innovatory clinical practice, supporting the introduction of clinical thermometry in the 1870’s and the new science of bacteriology in the 1880’s. In 1882, the New York Medical Society instituted a new code of ethics which allowed consultation with irregular practitioners. Flint led the opposition to this and was involved in founding the New York State Medical Society which maintained the original prohibition by the American Medical Association on irregular practitioners.
Flint was president of the American Medical Association in 1884 and was president-elect of the international Medical Congress when he died in 1886.
ASSESSMENT: Flint was a staunch promoter of better medical education and was recognised for his valuable contribution to the technique of auscultation.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Austin Flint, discoverer of the Flint heart murmur
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
ANB