Chateau de Vizille. Photo: James Dalrymple

Bernard Denis is a doctor and cardiologist, and was Head of the department of cardiology at the Hôpital A. Michallon in Grenoble. Now retired, he enjoys writing short stories in English. Grenoble Life invited him to submit this one, ‘My Oldest Patient’. 

My Oldest Patient – a character that all people living in the Dauphiné should know

by Denis Bernard

During my professional life (as head of the Department of Cardiology, Michallon Hospital) I had the opportunity to be consulted about a famous character. I won’t tell you yet who he is. It’s not a question of medical secrecy, but I prefer to give clues which will allow the reader to discover, through anecdotes, the personality and therefore the name of this character.

He was born in 1543, in a region not far from Gap: Le Champsaur.

He grew up in a Protestant family and became a remarkable warrior.

He was very skilful, wise, courageous, and he won a lot of battles.

He was cunning and that’s why he was called “the fox of the mountains”.

He became one of the richest citizens of Le Dauphiné and maybe even of France.

He was very generous and devoted to his province.

Often he acted as though he was the King of the Dauphiné – an illustration of his ambition.

He also built the well-known Chateau de Vizille. On this subject, an awful event shows how this character was sometime jealous and cynical. In Vizille there was an old castle named le Chateau du Roi and our character couldn’t stand this kind of competition.

One day he organised a huge party in his castle. All the inhabitants of Vizille were invited, especially the noble family living in le Chateau du Roi.

The party was magnificent. After sunset, the crowd was invited to go up to the balconies of the castle and admire a special firework display. On the skyline everybody could see the awful spectacle of the le Chateau du Roi disappearing in flames.

He had young and pretty mistress, Marie Vignon, whom he married, after the death of his wife. He still looked handsome but he was old for this time (in his sixties).

The wedding was simple – the celebration took place in the chapel of le Chateau du Touvet. After the marriage ceremony, a light lunch gathered all the friends of the couple in a large room on the first floor of the castle. The wine helping, everybody was happy and joyful. Unfortunately, in spite of the noise, our character heard somebody joking about the difference in age between him and his wife. Immediately very angry, he shouted, “If I catch the person who is joking about my wife and me, I’ll throw him through the window,” and a ripple ran over the audience: everybody knew that the groom was able to do what he had said.

The last clues: in Grenoble there is a street named after him, and the Jardin de ville is located just before a big house which was also his castle (now Maison de l’international).

I think it’s easy to find the name of this character. Do you give up?

His name is François de Bonne, Duc de Lesdiguieres, Connétable de France.

François de Bonne, Duc de Lesdiguieres

Lesdiguière was 83 years old when he died. In the seventeen century the life expectancy in France was about 45 years. Now in 2009 the life expectancy of the men in France is about 77 years.

Lesdiguières took care of Le Dauphiné with great success, he resisted a very dangerous illness and his life was uncommonly long. In spite of his many flaws, everybody in Le Dauphiné is proud of this character

And now, how did he become one of my “patients”?

In 1988, I received a letter from René Raymond, author of the book L’Insolite et Images fortes du passé. He needed the help of a cardiologist in view to give him a diagnosis based on the Lesdiguières autopsy report.

The Connétable died on September 28^th 1626 in Valence. After his death the body had to be embalmed but first an autopsy was carried out. A Capucin monk named Father Benoît de Montbrison wrote a report and here is a translation of a part of this report. (Don’t be afraid, it’s not frightful!).

“At the opening of the body we found that the noble parts were sound, we only noticed that the lung was a little dry and adhering to the ribs … But the most admirable thing was something that nobody – among the five doctors, some surgeons and apothecaries who were here present – had ever observed before, nor read, nor heard. It was that his heart, which was physically small (as is said about the heart of Alexandre the Great, and was observed about the heart of King Henri IV, le Grand), was crowned by a crown of small bones and cartilage. These things myself and my reliable comrade have touched and fingered, testimony of the truth of the grandeur he should attain”.

In spite of lack of details, it was not very difficult to give a diagnosis with a high degree of reliability.

As a matter of fact, the pulmonary lesion with adherence to the ribs and the very specific heart abnormalities allow us to diagnose the consequences of tuberculosis, which occurred probably during the youth of the patient.

This disease healed up spontaneously, with no clinical symptom of pulmonary or cardiac disease during his life. (The death of the patient was probably due to a disease without any evident link with the previous tuberculosis).

This history of tuberculosis makes this case so particular because in this period, and until 1945, tuberculosis was most often rapidly fatal.

Before sending René Raymond my answer, I thought I had better get the approval of my medical team.

In my department, there is a weekly meeting gathering all the doctors, surgeons, residents, trainees and students. Many difficult or odd cases are shown and opened for discussion.

Then, just before the end of the weekly meeting, I took the opportunity to read the autopsy report of the Connétable de Lesdiguières, as though it concerned one of my patients who died few days ago; but of course, without giving his name.

After an animated discussion, my diagnosis was approved unanimously.

And, when I said that the name of my patient was Lesdiguières, my respectful colleagues congratulated me on having among my patients such a famous old character.

But, through a light murmur in the room, I heard a student tell his friends, “If he took care of this patient throughout his life, I suppose he is the oldest teacher I have ever met”.

Fortunately I don’t look like the Connétable, and we were in a meeting room without windows!

After a short silence, everybody burst out laughing, the ice was broken and the meeting ended amicably, as always.

Bernard Denis

Bernard Denis is a doctor and cardiologist, and was Head of the department of cardiology at the Hôpital A. Michallon in Grenoble. Now retired, he enjoys writing short stories in English. Grenoble Life invited him to submit this one, Travel around the world.

Travel around the world

by Bernard Denis

Twenty years ago, I had to stay at home during the summer vacation. I don’t remember why, but I took this opportunity to put my house in order, especially the library.

During this task I found many books I had never read, or others I had read many times, and it appeared that it was not easy to sort them all out. How long would this work take? Probably my whole vacation and it was so boring.

Never mind, I had many other interesting things to do. For example, to put in order my large amount of postcards that were stocked in a case. It was a way to travel without going out of my library.

During my professional life I had had – as Cardiologist, Head of Department at the Hôpital Albert Michallon in Grenoble – the opportunity to visit many countries around the world. And every time I was abroad I bought postcards in view to send these to my family, but also to my team. Then it appeared that in this large collection I found many brand new postcards and which were of course from many foreign countries.

Why not send these unused postcards to the secretaries and nurses of my department as though I was travelling around the world? It was a credible trip. But how could I do that?

I chose postcards from England, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Central Europe. With this range, the countries could be successive stages of an imaginary trip around the world.

I wrote on each postcard a kind of day-to-day journal; it was for me a very amusing and exciting exercise to invent many situations and events, to describe cities and landscapes, inhabitants and so on …

After that it was mandatory to put the right stamp (from each country) on the envelopes which contained the postcards.

How could I find these? The only solution was to buy stamps in a shop where stamps are sold for collectors. So I went to the shop and I told the sales woman about my project. Immediately she was very interested … “What a marvellous idea!” she said, and she found all the stamps I needed.

I stuck the stamps on the envelopes but after that I had to mimic the postmark of every country.

Imagine for Japan: I had to imitate the ideograms! For me it was a very exciting game, and my drawings were perfectly achieved. I was really pleased with myself!

And now how to send these letters?

It was impossible to put these letters either in an ordinary mailbox or take them to a post office. Fortunately in the hospital there is an internal post service. It was exactly that I needed. But was not it too risky for me to go to the Hôpital Michallon?  If I met somebody from my department, the joke would have been spoilt.

The only solution was to send the letters from the Hôpital Sud in Echiroles. So, every two days I posted a letter, in the mailbox dedicated to internal mail, and after twelve days the trip was finished: Grenoble, London, Quebec, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Budapest, Paris, Grenoble.

When I came back from my vacation, I won’t tell you the welcome which awaited me. Everybody believed I was really coming back from an around-the-world trip!

All the postcards were pinned on a large map of the world, hung up on the wall of the secretary’s office. And I had to answer a lot of questions.

Nevertheless, a secretary of the team was suspicious and said, “it seems you were in a hurry; it’s not like you!” Another said that it was a pity to travel so fast; and to spend so much money for that.

Eventually the conclusion of my team was I had met an air hostess and run after her from plane to plane, apparently without any success.

Thanks to this joke it was a good opportunity to gather my team in a warm and friendly atmosphere and drink a glass of champagne.

Even now some people believe that I really travelled around the world. It was a nice dream. For two weeks, I had opened a window on new landscapes, far beyond the hospital and the dull everyday life.

Bernard Denis was born on August 25^th 1934. He is a doctor and cardiologist but has been retired for nine years. He was Head of the department of cardiology, at the Hôpital A. Michallon, Grenoble, and Professor of cardiology at the University (Faculté de Médecine). He specialises in Echocardiography and organised (with great success) seven congresses dedicated to this technique.

Bernard is also the author of a book Semiologie et pathologie Cardiovasculaires. The last edition of this book (1996) is used by students from many French-speaking countries.

His hobbies are music (piano), sport (cycling, skiing and walking) and reading English books.