[Armand Trousseau, phlegmasia alba and gastric cancer]

Armand Trousseau (1801-1867) was one of the greatest doctors of our cultural heritage. He regarded medicine as an art form expressed through the individuality of the physician. While still a young man, he was appointed professor of therapeutics and pharmacology at the University of Paris. He was a master of rhetoric and lectured on general medicine and neurology at the bedside. Trousseau recognised that phlegmasia alba was frequently associated with malignant disease. His description of the causality in his most famous work Clinique médicale de l'Hôtel Dieu de Paris is impressive. When he later suffered phlebitis of the left arm, he correctly diagnosed stomach cancer, from which he died six months later.