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DIAGNOSIS AND PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY. 473
had come to recognize the hopelessness of attempts to
fathom the essential nature of disease by bold but ill-founded
hypotheses and philosophical speculations, they applied the
analytical method to this subject also and began by making
sure of and examining those concrete facts of which the
whole picture of disease is made up.
The perfecting of the appliances used in diagnosis gave
rise to a deeper and more thorough study of the symptoms
•of disease and the startling advance made in pathological
anatomy held out a promise that valuable conclusions would
be arrived at concerning the changes lying at the root of
such symptoms. By a comparison between clinical obser­
vations and notes taken in the post-mortem room, the
development and essential nature of most diseases became,
by degrees, more intelligible.
To physics and chemistry for the most part we owe the
advances made in the art of diagnosis. During last century
percussion was practised only by a few as, for example, by
M. STOLL; it fell almost completely into oblivion and first
under the influence of CORVISART assumed the place which
it deserves among the means of diagnosis used at the bed-
cside. Having had his attention drawn to it by AuEN-
BRUGGER'S almost forgotten treatise, CORVISART tested the
-observations there laid down during a period of twenty
years, corrected and extended them by his own private
-experience and then published his famous work on percus­
sion, in which he did full justice to the services rendered
h>y the discoverer. Percussion was rendered more perfect
in many ways by PiORRY, who introduced the plessimeter,
by WlNTRiCH who recommended the employment of a
hammer, by SKODA especially who furnished a correct
-explanation of the various sounds heard on percussion and
show 7 ed a reforming and inventive genius in all directions,
by TRAUBE and others.
Auscultation also at the same time underwent reforma­
tion and scientific improvement. Whereas before it had
been only occasionally practised and then by the direct