AUTOGRAPH. 



7M 



siHHilml. developed, matured, and svitomatiaed the highly-important 

 practical rwulu which it has afforded. 



" In the year 1816,' says Lsonnee in his great work ' De V Ausculta- 

 tion MMiate rt dea MaUdio. dm Poumoo* et du Cceur,' " I was con- 

 sulted by a young woman affected with the general symptoms of 

 aixid heart, and In wboss cue percussion and the application of the 

 hand were of litUe avail, owing to her being extremely liuty. The 

 immediate application of the ear being inadmissible for obvious reasons, 

 I happened to recollect a simple and well known fact in acoiintics, 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 my patient's chert 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 imme- 

 diate application of the ear. From this moment I imagined that 

 meaai might be found to ascertain the character, not merely of the 

 action of the heart, but of every species of sound produced by the 

 motion of all the organs within the cheat." 



Diligently applying himself to improve and perfect the rude instru- 

 ments which he employed in his first trials, Laennec at length con- 

 structed that which is now in general use, called the Stethoscope (from 

 rriitot, fcrrort or ekett, and axmim, to examine or explore), by the aid of 

 which he was at once impressed with the conviction that he should be 

 enabled to discover " a set of new signs of diseases of the chest, simple 

 and certain, and such aa might probably render the diagnosis of these 

 itimsns as positive and circumstantial as that of many affections which 

 come within the immediate reach of the hand or the instrument of the 

 surgeon." And this conviction, to a great extent, has been realised, 

 for a new, clear, steady, and certain-light has, by the aid of this instru- 

 ment, been thrown on almost all the diseases of all the organs con- 

 tained in the chest 



The art of distinguishing disease by sound comprehends then two 

 distinct methods, that of atucultatiun and that of ptrciarion. The study 

 of auscultation may be pursued either by the unassisted ear, or through 

 the medium of instruments ; the first is called immediate or direct, the 

 second mediate auscultation. In like manner percussion may be per- 

 formed either on the natural surface of the body, or through the 

 medium of some solid or tense substance firmly applied to it. The 

 first is termed direct, the second mediate, percussion. [PERCUSSION.] 

 See also Double, ' Semeiologie Generale ; ' Forbee's Translation of 

 Corvisart's ' Avenbrugger ; ' Laennec, ' De I'Auscultation Mediate ; ' 

 arU. ' Auscultation,' in ' Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine,' and in the 

 ' Dictionary of Practical Medicine,' by Dr. Copland. 



AUSON1ANS (AU-SONES), an ancient people of the Italian penin- 

 sula, who appear to have been a branch of the great Opican or Oscan 

 nation, originally settled in Bruttium, and thence driven by the 

 CEretri into Campania. They were either an identical or nearly 

 related people with the Aurunci. Niebuhr maintains that Ausones is 

 the Greek form of the native name Auruni, from which the adjective 

 form Aurunicua, shortened into Auruncus, would come. This inter- 

 change of < and r, in certain positions, is not at all uncommon. Suessa 

 Aurunca, near the Liris, was in the centre of the country which the 

 Auftones occupied. Cales (Livy, viii. 16), Ausona, Minturnso, and 

 Veacia (ix. 25) were Ausonian cities. Livy (viii. 15, 16) seems to 

 peck of the Aurunci of Suessa and the Ausones of Gales as two 

 different People ; the former were the enemies, the latter the allies 

 of the Sjilii-ini. The explanation must be, that the Ausones of Cales, 

 and the Aurunci of Suessa, were both Ausones or Aurunci (it is 

 indifferent which term we use), and that one part of the nation, at 

 the period referred to, was hostile to the Romans, and the other part 

 friendly to them. (See Niebuhr, i. 63, Ac., English translation; and 

 Osct.) Lower Italy, and sometimes even all Italy, is designated by 

 the term Ausonia. Cowper uses it in this sense 



" Nor for Autoni' grorcj 

 Of (olden fruitage and her myrtle bowen." 



AUSPICES (A lopina). For a brief view of the Roman superstition 

 upon which the ceremony of tho auspices was founded, the reader is 

 referred to Atom. It is there stated that the greater part of the 

 Roman magistrates, before they entered upon their office, went through 

 the ceremony of inauguration, which was supposed to confer upon 

 them the protection of heaven. When the Roman empire had greatly 

 extended Itself, it was no longer possible for the small body of augurs 

 on all occasions to jwrform their duties in person ; and it was therefore 

 conducive to the public service that the magistrates themselves who 

 had been inaugurated should be supposed to have received from that 

 ceremony some share in the divine privilege. Thus they too were able 

 to deduce the pleasure of heaven from the movements of buds and the 

 other sign* which belonged to the sacred science. Originally, this 

 power * peculiar to the patrician members, and the privilege was 

 employed as an argument fur excluding the plebeians from the higher 

 magistracies ; but eventually, when the plebeians had acquired a right 

 ,,f admission to the consulate, pnetormhip, tc., they also necessarily had 

 the privilege of the auspices attached to these magistracies. Still, to 

 the Try last, those offices which in their origin were purely of a 



plebeian character, as the tribunate, had no connection whatever with 

 the auspices. There were many niceties in the law of auspices, which 

 were matters of dispute among the Romans themselves, and were 

 referred from time to time to the college of augurs, or sometimes to a 

 single member of that body. The most important distinction was that 

 which existed between the greater and the less auspices : thus the 

 auspices of a consul were superior to those of a prsjtor ; and conse- 

 quently the latter, it was ruled, could not preside at a consular 



. i. ti.'l:. 



In an army the commander-in -chief received the auspices with the 

 imprrium, and so completely was any success attributed to this privilege, 

 that if any part of his army under any inferior officer, in any part of 

 the world, gained a victory, that success was attributed to the com- 

 niander-in-chief, who perhaps might have been the whole time in the 

 neighbourhood of Rome, and he alone was entitled to the honours of 

 the triumph. In this case the lieutenant was said to fight under the 

 auspices of the Commander-in-chief. As the ceremony of the auspices 

 was originally employed to sanction the commencement of every im- 

 portant undertaking, whether public or private, the word aiaj>ieari, 

 ' to take the auspices,' came at last to bear the signification of com- 

 mencing any matter of importance. 



AUTHENTIC, in music, a term used in the ancient ecclesiastical 

 modes [MODES], but unknown in modern music. When the octave is 

 divided harmonically, as in the proportion 6, 4, 8, that is to say, when 

 the fifth is below and the fourth above, for example, 



then the mode is called authentic. When the octave is divided arith- 

 metically, in the proportion 4, 8, 2, that is, when the fifth is above 

 the fourth, for example, 



the mode is then called plagal. 



Dr. Pepusch says, " When the fugue is in the fifth above or below, 

 or in the fourth above or below, then one of the parts is in the authm tic, 

 the other in the plagal mode of the key we compose in." Handel's 

 chorus, ' He trusted in God,' in the ' Messiah,' may be adduced as an 

 example of this, where the subject is in the authentic mode, the answer 

 in the plagal. 



AUTHEXTICA, a barbarous Latin version of the Novella! of Jus- 

 tinian [JUSTINIAN'S LEGISLATION], so called by early writers on the 

 civil law, from its being a literal translation from the original Greek. 

 (Ducange, ' Gloss, ad verbum.') 



AUTO-DE-FE' (Act of Faith), or, as it is termed by the Spaniards, 

 with whom it was most in use, AUTO-DA-FE', was the public and 

 solemn reading of extracts from the trials promoted by the Inquisition, 

 and of the sentences pronounced by the judges of that tribunal. At 

 this form or act the offenders themselves were present, or in case of 

 their death or unavoidable absence, their bones or effigies were substi- 

 tuted for them; there were also present the civil authorities and 

 corporate bodies of the town where it was performed, particularly the 

 criminal judge, into whose hands the offenders were delivered, that he 

 might inflict upon them the punishment prescribed by the laws ; the 

 fire, gallows, .and executioners having been previously prepared by order 

 of the inquisitors. When this execution was performed with tin' 

 highest pomp and ceremony, it was called autu pttlifo general, general 

 and public act. There was also an auto jxirticuiar, private act, at \vhi< h 

 the inquisitors and criminal judge only were present; the autii! 

 in the halls of the Inquisition, in the presence of such persons aa the 

 inquisitors invited, and of the ministers of the tribunals alone ; and, 

 finally, the autu tingular, held in the church, or in the public square, 

 against a single individual. The punishment was inflicted for \\li.it 

 had been decided to be heresy by the Inquisition. On May 21, 1559, 

 31 persons were thus executed at Valladolid, and 37 were remitted to 

 prison for a subsequent auto-da-fe!, which took place on Sept. 24, at 

 Seville, when 24 persons were burnt, and 80 subjected to other punish- 

 ments, nearly all on charges of Lutheranism. 



In the different autoa-dc-fd which have been celebrated ill S|nin, 

 from the first which took place at Seville in 1481, to the abolition 

 of the tribunal by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1808, no less than 

 34,658 persons were executed, cither publicly or secretly ; 228,214 

 victims suffered various other punishments ; and 18,049 were executed 

 in effigy. The last auto, according to Llorente, was the auto tin 

 celebrated in December, 1815, at Mexico, against a certain ecclesiastic 

 named Morellos, accused of heresy. He was absolved from the charge 

 of heresy, but was afterwards hung by order of the viceroy foi 

 treason, as being concerned in a plot to effect the emancipation of 

 Mexico from Spain. 



The suppression of the Inquisition was confirmed by the Cortes in 

 1813, but it was reinstated by Ferdinand VII. in 1814; there w. n, 

 however, no public executions under it, though many imprisonments, 

 and in 1820 the Inquisition was again formally abolished by the 

 legislature. 



AUTOGRAPH, from the Greek uintyftujiov, written \aith one"i own 

 hand, an original manuscript; the handwriting of any person. 



