Background
Joseph Leopold Auenbrugger was born on November 19, 1722, in Graz, Austria to a family of a wealthy innkeeper.
Josef Leopold Auenbrugger (1722–1809), born in Graz, invented percussion as a diagnostic technique.
the University of Vienna, Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Josef Leopold Auenbrugger received his medical education at the University of Vienna.
Josef Leopold Auenbrugger, invented percussion as a diagnostic technique.
Josef Leopold Auenbrugger
Josef Leopold Auenbrugger
Auenbrugger`s published text, Inventum Novum ex Percussione Thoracis Humani Interni Pectoris Morbos Detegendi (A New Discovery that Enables the Physician from the Percussion of the Human Thorax to Detect the Diseases Hidden Within the Chest) has been regarded as a book that defines a new epoch in the modern history of medicine.
Josef Leopold Auenbrugger, invented percussion as a diagnostic technique.
Josef Leopold Auenbrugger
Josef Leopold Auenbrugger
Auenbrugger`s published text, Inventum Novum ex Percussione Thoracis Humani Interni Pectoris Morbos Detegendi (A New Discovery that Enables the Physician from the Percussion of the Human Thorax to Detect the Diseases Hidden Within the Chest) has been regarded as a book that defines a new epoch in the modern history of medicine.
the University of Vienna, Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Josef Leopold Auenbrugger received his medical education at the University of Vienna.
Leopold Auenbrugger and his wife Marianne.
https://www.amazon.com/Inventum-Novum-Facsimile-Corvisarts-Translation/dp/B002JK9GFE/?tag=2022091-20
1761
https://www.amazon.com/Nouvelle-Mbethode-Reconnaitre-Maladies-Percussion/dp/1273657594/?tag=2022091-20
https://www.amazon.com/Rauchfangkehrer-Die-Opern-Welt-German-ebook/dp/B009A89TPU/?tag=2022091-20
Joseph Leopold Auenbrugger was born on November 19, 1722, in Graz, Austria to a family of a wealthy innkeeper.
Leopold Auenbrugger received his medical education at the University of Vienna, where one of his teachers was Gerhard van Swieten (1700-1772), who, through a series of reforms had made the medical faculty one of the leading in Europe. Soon Auenbrugger came under van Swieten’s influence; the extent of this influence is shown by his dedication to van Swieten of a work suggesting camphor as a treatment for a special form of mania (Experimentum nascens de remedio specifico sub signo specifico in mania virorum, 1776). He graduated on November 18, 1752.
From 1751 to 1758 Auenbrugger worked as assistant physician at the Spanish Hospital but did not receive a salary until 1755. Because of his work in the hospital, Empress Maria Theresa in 1757 ordered the Faculty of Medicine to admit him as a member without charging him any fees. From 1758 to 1762 he was a chief physician at the Spanish Hospital, obtaining experience in the diagnosis of chest diseases. For seven years he had observed the changes in tone caused by diseases of the lungs or the heart in patients at the Spanish Hospital, checking and controlling his findings by dissections of corpses and by experiments. If one taps with the fingertips on a healthy chest wall, one will perceive a sound like that of a drum. Diseases in the chest cavity change the normal tone of the tapping to a sonus altior (high or tympanitic sound), a sonus obscurior (indistinct sound), or a sonus carnis percussae (dull sound). After leaving the Spanish Hospital, Auenbrugger was a prominent practitioner in Vienna.
In the first few years after its publication, the Inventum novum was reviewed in several journals, the first mention probably being that of Oliver Goldsmith in the London Public Ledger (27 August 1761). In 1762 Albrecht von Haller drew attention to “this important work” in his lengthy review in the Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen. More influential than these positive references, however, was the opinion of Rudolf August Vogel, who could not find anything new in the Inventum novum; rather, he claimed to recognize in it only the succussio Hippocratis. Van Swieten and Anton de Haen, the chief of the Vienna Clinic, never mentioned Auenbrugger’s percussion, not even when discussing diseases of the chest, but Maximilian Stoll, de Haen’s successor, described it in his publications and systematically taught it at the bedside. The spread of Auenbrugger’s technique was interrupted by Stoll’s premature death; his successors Jacob Reinlein and Johann Peter Frank did nothing to carry on his work.
Nevertheless, chest percussion was used as a diagnostic tool before 1800. Heinrich Callisen, a surgeon in Copenhagen, reported several observations obtained by percussion in his System der Wundarzneikunst (1788); and the Parisian surgeon Raphael Bienvenu Sabatier used it to advantage for the diagnosis of empyema. Percussion was practiced and taught at several German universities, including Halle, Wittenberg, Wūrzburg, and Rostock. About 1797 Jean-Nicolas Corvisart learned of chest percussion by reading Stoll. He investigated the method for several years and soon taught it to his students. In his classic book on heart diseases, Essai sur les maladies et les lésions organiques du coeur (1806), he based numerous diagnoses on percussion. Since there was only Rozière de la Chassagne’s inadequate translation of the Inventum novum (1770), Corvisart published a new one in 1808, enriching it with a large number of his own observations and thus ending any question of the applicability of the new method.
Auenbrugger lived to the age of 86 and died on May 18, 1809, in Vienna, Austria. He is sometimes said to have died in the typhus epidemic of 1798, but he actually died over a decade later.
Auenbrugger is considered the founder of chest percussion. He was undoubtedly aided in developing this diagnostic technique by his musical knowledge (he wrote the libretto for a comic opera by Antonio Salieri), which enabled him to perceive differences in tone when the chest was tapped. In the Inventum novum (1761) he presented his findings. Auenbrugger’s method permitted the determination of disease-caused changes in the lungs and heart of a live patient and thus gave a new, dependable foundation to the diagnosis of chest diseases. Even with the development of X rays, this method still has diagnostic value.
His published text, Inventum Novum ex Percussione Thoracis Humani Interni Pectoris Morbos Detegendi (A New Discovery that Enables the Physician from the Percussion of the Human Thorax to Detect the Diseases Hidden Within the Chest) has been regarded as a book that defines a new epoch in the modern history of medicine.
In 1783 Auenbrugger was Knighted for services to medicine by Emporer Joseph II in appreciation to his medical achievements.
Quotations: "I have not been unconscious of the dangers I must encounter, since it has always been the fate of those who have illustrated or improved the arts and sciences by their discovery, to be beset by envy, malice, hatred, detraction, and calumny.” – Auenbrugger 1807.
Auenbrugger was also a gifted amateur musician who wrote the text for an opera composed by Antonio Salieri, a contemporary of Mozart in Vienna.
Auenbrugger was especially noted for his cordial relations with the younger members of his profession and for his kindness to the poor and to those suffering from tuberculosis.
Leopold Auenbrugger had a wife Marianne. Auenrbugger's daughter, Marianna, was a composer and pupil of Antonio Salieri.
Italian physician Giovanni Maria Lances (1654-1720), first described percussion of the chest bone in the diagnosis of consumption (tuberculosis)
Before Auenbrugger`s death, however, his method had aroused the attention of French physician René Laennec, who, following up the ideas suggested by it, discovered auscultation.
The value of percussion in physical examination was later recognized by Jean-Nicolas Corvisart, who popularized it teaching it to his students in France, and by Josef Skoda in Vienna. He also translated and illustrated Auenbrugger's book in 1808, which helped to make Auenbrugger's work on percussion better known.
