Obituário

Abstract

Madame Claudine Portmann has recently left us. Born Claudine Barreau, in 1923, at the costal village where she died on January 21, 2008; at home and surrounded by her family, Madame Portmann was a role model of simplicity and modesty. This small village was her favorite place, from her beach house she patiently admired the movement of the tides, read her books, studied, and she loved to have family and friends around her. She studied Medicine in Bordeaux, and was mostly interested in pediatrics. Through the influence of her fiancé then, Michel Portmann (whom she married in 1948) she moved to a branch of Medicine that was brand new and exciting at the time: hearing loss in children and its consequence. She was board-certified in Otorhinolaryngology with a thesis about Congenital Hearing Loss Caused by Rubella in the Mother; since the early 50's she was a tireless fighter on behalf of children with hearing disabilities. In 1952 she helped build the Regional Audiology Center at the University of Bordeaux, the Experimental Audiology Laboratory and the Language and Hearing Center, all in that region. In 1953, together with her husband, she published the Precis d'Audiometrie Clinique which was published nine more times and published in numerous languages, including Portuguese, which still is paramount reading for those interested in Audiology. In 1956, together with Prof. Michel Portmann she founded the second School of Speech and Hearing Therapy in France, one year after the one founded in Paris. Numerous specialists, Otorhinolaryngologists, pediatricians, speech and hearing therapists, teachers of hearing impaired people and hearing aid fitters, went to Bordeaux to visit her office and exchange experiences with this wonderful person: her dynamic personality, ethics, selflessness, her discipline and the enormous care she gave to the little hearing impaired and his/her parents were an example for those who shared with Claudine her professional activities. The fruits of this tireless mission made her worldly famous, and she traveled around the globe, to the Americas, Asia and Europe to teach courses and give practical demonstrations. On one of her first visits to South America, she went to São Paulo, in 1974 for the first International Congress of the Georges Portmann Institut, presided by a loyal friend of the Portmann Family, Dr. Alexandre Medicis da Silveira. Her professional duties did not interfere with her family life, she was an exemplary wife and mother, understanding and compassionate, keeping at all times a relationship of deep friendship with her children Annie, Nathalie and Didier. The world and habits have changed much, but not enough to prevent Claudine from talking in equal