NINETEENTH-CENTURY MEDICINE 



ficed the name of Avenbrugger to my own vanity, a 

 thing which I am unwilling to do. It is he, and the 

 beautiful invention which of right belongs to him, that 

 I desire to recall to life." l 



By this time a reaction had set in against the meta- 

 physical methods in medicine that had previously been 

 so alluring ; the scientific spirit of the time was making 

 itself felt in medical practice ; and this, combined with 

 Corvisart's fame, brought the method of percussion 

 into immediate and well-deserved popularity. Thus 

 was laid the foundation for the method of so-called 

 physical diagnosis, which is one of the corner-stones 

 of modern medicine. 



The method of physical diagnosis as practised in our 

 day was by no means completed, however, with the 

 work of Corvisart. Percussion alone tells much less 

 than half the story that may be elicited from the organs 

 of the chest by proper interrogation. The remainder 

 of the story can only be learned by applying the ear 

 itself to the chest, directly or indirectly. Simple as 

 this seems, no one thought of practising it for some 

 years after Corvisart had shown the value of percus- 

 sion. 



Then, in 1 8 1 5 , another Paris physician, Rene" Thophile 

 Hyacinthe Laennec, discovered, almost by accident, 

 that the sound of the heart-beat could be heard sur- 

 prisingly through a cylinder of paper held to the ear 

 and against the patient's chest. Acting on the hint 

 thus received, Laennec substituted a hollow cyl- 

 inder of wood for the paper, and found himself pro- 

 vided with an instrument through which not merely 

 heart sounds but murmurs of the lungs in respira- 



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