Auenbrugger and Laennec : two pioneers who have demarcated the development of western thoracic medicine

Abstract

With the publications in 1761 of Giovan Battista Morgagni’s (1682-1771) ‘De sedibus et causis morborum’ (On the Sites and Causes of Diseases),1,2 pathological anatomy became a science in its own right. Morgagni’s aim was to try and correlate the symptoms of a disease as it developed with findings at post mortem.3 Although this found immediate application in surgical disorders, where lesions were often visible and palpable, it was not thought to be equally useful in cases of internal ailments as long as physicians were unable to explore what was happening to internal organs during life.4 This was made possible with the clinical diagnostic procedures pioneered by Leopold Auenbrugger (1722-1809) and by René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec (1781-1826).