Chest-Tapping

chest-tapping

ALTERNATIVE NAME/S: percussion

DETAILS: If you tap the side of a full wine-barrel, it sounds different than the noise made tapping an empty wine-barrel. It was this premise that led Leopold Auenbrugger*, a Viennese physician, to conceive of the idea of “chest-tapping” patients when diagnosing them. Auenbrugger had grown up amongst vinyards, and after seven years of research he discovered that if he tapped a patient’s chest with his fingers or a small hammer, he could hear things inside the patient’s body.

Chest-tapping produces sounds which help doctors determine such things as whether there’s fluid in the lungs, and the size and position of various internal organs, including the heart. Leopold’s peers largely ignored his declaration, but the procedure was regularly used after Napoleon’s personal physician, Jean-Nicolas Corvisart des Marets, made the practise known to the French in 1808. The concept was strengthened further when the stethoscope was invented by Laennec in 1816.

At that point, listening to sounds, in particular from the heart, became routine, as it continues to be today.

ONELINER: Chest tapping

Other connections: nONE

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Auenbrugger von Auenbrugg, Leopold. Merriam-Webster’s Biographical Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Incorporated, 1995. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2003.

http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC

Cardiology. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved November 3, 2003, from Encyclopaedia Britannica Online.

Percussion. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved November 3, 2003, from Encyclopaedia Britannica Online.