Beschreibung:

AUENBRUGGER, Leopold (1722-1809). Inventum novum ex percussione thoracis humani ut signo abstrusos interni pectoris morbos detegendi . Vienna: Johann Thomas Trattner, 1761. 8 o (203 x 120 mm). Printer's woodcut device on title, woodcut headpiece and initial, type ornament head- and tailpiece. (Occasional light foxing.) 19th-century quarter morocco (extremities rubbed); morocco-backed folding case. Provenance : Dr. Jean Louis Lon Mailliot (fl. 1843-1874), author of several works on percussion and auscultation including Histoire de la percussion (Paris 1852) and Trait pratique d'auscultation , published in Paris, 1874 (signature on title and sheet of his stationery with notes concerning Auenbrugger's Experimentum nascens de remedio specifico sub signo specifico in mania virorum [Vienna 1776], pasted-down silhouette on verso). FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, without the errata on F8v. A classic work of medical history, describing Auenbrugger's discovery of the diagnostic value of chest percussion, the "first advance in physical diagnosis since the age of Hippocrates" (Grolier Medicine ). Auenbrugger was the son of an innkeeper, and legend has it that it was his experience thumping wine casks to determine their fullness that led him to attempt an analagous diagnostic technique on his patients. It is certain that he was "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. For seven years he had observed the changes in tone caused by the 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. In the Inventum novum 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" (DSB). His discovery met with little enthusiasm among his peers, but shortly before his death Napoleon's physician Jean Nicolas Corvisart published a French translation of the book, substantially enlarged with his own observations (see lot 257), which finally led to its general acceptance by the medical community. FINE ASSOCIATION COPY. Garrison-Morton 2672; Grolier Medicine 45; Heirs of Hippocrates 954; NLM/Blake, p. 23; Osler 1863; Waller 519; Wellcome II, p. 70; Norman 81.