Physicians and Pathologists.
Leopold Auenbrugger (1722-1809), a physician of Vienna, was the inventor of the method of detecting diseases of the chest by percussion. By striking the chest directly with the tips of the fingers (not as we do now by interposing a finger of our left hand while we percuss the chest mediately with the fingers of the other hand) he diagnosed by the sound evoked the condition of the organs of the thorax. His system was at first received with contempt and ridicule by his profession; but in 1808, Corvisart translated Auenbrugger’s great work, the Inventum Novum, into French, and the method quickly achieved an European reputation.
René T. H. Laënnec (1781-1826), the celebrated French pathologist, was the inventor of the stethoscope. His great discovery was purely accidental—a fact which he declares in his famous work.
“In 1816 I was consulted by a young woman labouring under general symptoms of diseased heart, and in whose case percussion and the application of the hand were of little avail on account of the great degree of fatness. I happened to recollect a simple and well-known fact in acoustics, and fancied it might be turned to some use on the present occasion. The fact I allude to is the great distinctness with which we hear the scratch of a pin at one end of a piece of wood, on applying our ear to the other. Immediately, on this suggestion, I rolled a quire of paper into a kind of cylinder, and applied one end of it to the region of the heart and the other to my ear, and was not a little surprised and pleased to find that I could thereby perceive the action of the heart in a manner much more clear and distinct than I had ever been able to do by the immediate application of the ear.”[1031]
Jean N. Corvisart (1755-1821) introduced into France Auenbrugger’s method of percussion, one of the most important aids to physical diagnosis.
Gaspard L. Bayle (1774-1816) made those important researches on tubercle and the changes in the lungs and other organs in consumption which form the basis of our present knowledge of the subject. From this time French physicians introduced great precision in their study of symptoms, so as to invest them with a really scientific character. Combined with the perfected methods of anatomical observation, a new era in clinical medicine dates from this period.
Louis (1787-1872) made important researches on pulmonary consumption and typhoid fever, and introduced the numerical or statistical method in medical science, which was an important step towards making it an exact science.
Sir Robert Christison (1797-1882) discovered the effects and properties of Calabar bean, and was the most famous of all English investigators of poisons and poisoning.
John Cheyne (1777-1836), in conjunction with William Stokes (1804-1878), a great clinical teacher and author of works on diseases of the chest and heart, discovered the form of breathing in certain disordered conditions which is called “Cheyne-Stokes’ respiration.”
Robert J. Graves (1797-1853), a great observer and clinical teacher, gave his name to a disease.