Auscultation and percussion : together with the other methods of physical examination of the chest.

  • Samuel Gee
Date:
1877
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Auscultation and percussion : together with the other methods of physical examination of the chest. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    of his method.^ When we hear of the reception which Auenbrugger's contemporaries in the city of Vienna gave to his discovery it is difficult to restrain a feeling of anger. The medical dic- tators of the day, Van Swieten and De Haen, disregarded percussion altogether: less exalted personages carelessly confounded it with the Hip- pocratic method of succussion. Auenbrugger tells us that he was prepared to meet with envy, hatred, and calumny; we know that he did meet with what is harder to bear, simple neglect ; however the scanty records of the man's life justify the belief that he passed from one social deed to another social deed, and found his hap- piness in doing so.^ It was worthy of StoU that he at least should not fail to acknowledge the 1 Leoijoldi Auenbrugger, M.D., Inventum novum ex per- cussione thoracis liumani ut signo abstrusos interni pectoris niorbos cletegendi. Vindobonre, 1761. This edition is very rare : a reprint was published at Grraz in 1867. Th& second edition, of 1763, is more common. ^ De Haen himself has suffered in a similar manner. The admirable papers, which appeared from time to time in the Katio Medendi, upon the use of the thei-mometer in medicine, were forgotten for eighty years ; and the leading- facts of clinical thermometry, well known to De Haen, have been rediscovered in our own day. ^ Leopold Auenbrugger, der Erfinder der Percussion das Binstkorbes, und sein Inventum] No-\'\im : von Prcf. Dr. Clar. Graz, 1867.
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