AUENBRUGGER VON AUENBRUGG, LEOPOLD

born Nov. 19, 1722, Graz, Austria died May 17, 1809, Vienna physician who devised the diagnostic technique of percussion (the art of striking a surface part of the body with short, sharp taps to diagnose the condition of the parts beneath the sound). In 1761, after seven years of investigation, he published a description of the method in Inventum Novum, but it was not until a French translation by Jean-Nicolas Corvisart des Marets, personal physician to Napoleon, appeared in 1808 that the diagnostic method gained worldwide acceptance. It remains a fundamental procedure in diagnosis.