H. Vaquez, favorite pupil of Potain and master of clinical cardiology, was born in Paris into a family of silk merchants. He studied at the Lycee Condorcet and began his medical training as intern in the hospitals of Paris in 1884.1 He was early interested in the diseases of the heart and circulation, and, before he had reached academic maturity, he had described in a patient on Potain's service at Charité a special form of persistent polycythemia, associated neither with the cyanosis of high altitude nor of congenital heart disease.
Vaquez was appointed physician to the hospitals of Paris in 1895 and became professor agrégé in 1898; but not until 1918 was he promoted to full professor on the faculty. During his long association with San-Antoine hospital, and into his retiring years while on the staff of la Pitié, he studied many clinical subjects. These included sphygmomanometry, the peripheral