AUENBRUGGER, LEOPOLD. 1722-1809.


Inventum novum ex percussione thoracis humani ut signo abstrusos interni.... Vienna: J.T. Trattner, 1763. 8vo (212 x 125 mm). 95 pp. Woodcut device on title page and endpiece on last page of text. Modern vellum, inked title on spine, renewed endpapers, pages untrimmed. Minor spotting throughout.FIRST EDITION, SECOND ISSUE with text identical to the first edition of 1761, but with a different woodcut device on title (see P.J. Bishop, "A bibliography of Auenbrugger's 'Inventum novum' (1761)." This variation is rarer than the first issue, with none known at auction since 1965. "Auenbrugger founded the practice of chest percussion, a method that gave a new and dependable foundation to the diagnosis of chest diseases by permitting determination of disease-caused changes in the lungs and hearts of living patients. The discovery appears to have been based on the analogy between the chest cavity and wine casks, which Auenbrugger, the son of an innkeeper, had learned to thump as a means of determining their fullness" (Norman 81). PMM 280.