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OTHER BRANCHES OF,MEDICAL SCIENCE. 371
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the greatest acquisition which diagnosis owes to this
period, was the discovery of the art of percussion by the
Viennese doctor AUENBRUGGER* Unfortunately this
remained almost unnoticed : only in the 19th century did
it become, as C. G. LUDWIG of Leipzig said in the year
1763, "a torch which brought light into the gloom which
hrooded over the diseases of the thorax."
Morbid anatomy also made a great step in advance.
Men ceased to look upon pathological changes observed in
the dead body as nothing but curiosities which satisfied the
spectacular cravings of collectors ever ready to grasp at
rarities, and began to suspect, and to examine into, their
•connection with clinical symptoms. W HARVEY declared
that a man can learn more from the necropsy of one human
being who has died of consumption than he can from the
dissection of ten who have been killed by hanging.
BENEVIENI, T. BARTHOLINUS, BONET, RIDLEY, LANCISI,
VALSALVA and others deposited in their writings a number
of valuable observations. WEPFER made the first attempt
to set free the subject of cerebral diseases from the chaos
•of mystical-transcendental speculation in which it was lost,
and to explain such diseases by pathological changes
in the brain. He observed the seat of apoplectic lesions
healed into cicatricial tissue and described the affection
named afterwards by FOTHERGILL " a painful affection of the
face" i.e. tic douloureux. In the 18th century FONTANA
made the important discovery that the "staggers" in
sheep is a disease caused by hydatids in the brain.
The pathology of the vascular system owed substantial
progress to the labours of VlEUSSENS, LANCISI and SENAC
VlEUSSENS f observed instances of adhesion of the pericar­
dium to the heart and described hydrops pericardii and
pericarditis. He portrayed with astonishing clearness
the relations between the pathological changes in the dead
body and the symptoms during life in a case in which he
* AUENBRUGGER: Inventum novum, Vindob. 1761.
f J. PHILIPP in the Janus ii, 580-598. iii, 316-326.