Redécouverte de la percussion thoracique et intégration à la méthode anatomoclinique aux 18e et 19e siècles

Often neglected, thoracic percussion has made physical examination more effective. It was during the Age of Enlightenment that Leopold Auenbrugger in Vienna rediscovered this ancient technique, which he correlated with autopsies in an anatomoclinical revolution that was now underway. Thanks to structural reforms, he benefited from new hospital and teaching institutions where doctors and anatomopathologists rubbed shoulders, promoting these anatomoclinical correlations. Translated in France by Rozière de la Chassagne in 1770, it was not until Corvisart, the emperor’s physician, that this technique was popularized in France in 1808 in a treatise in which his percussive experience was compared with the translation of Auenbrugger’s work. His student, Laennec, thanks to the invention of the stethoscope, described in his treatise in 1826 the first comparison between mediate auscultation, immediate percussion and dissections of cadavers. A few years later, Pierre-Adolphe Piorry imagined an instrument that he called a «plessimeter» to be interposed between the percussing finger and the thorax, and mediate percussion was born. W. Stokes and J. Hope were the first to practice exclusively digital percussion in 1831. Finally, Joseph Škoda, an Austro-Hungarian of Czech origin, formalized percussion a little more by using his knowledge of physics and acoustics. He added his own clinical sign: skodaism or skodism. Even if it had no therapeutic consequences other than the location of the place to be punctured, the field doctor gained relevance and autonomy in his daily work.