AVENBRUGGER, LEOPOLD, an ingenious physician of Grütz, in Styria. We owe to him the important mode of investigating diseases of the chest and abdomen by auscultation. His method was to apply the ear to the chest, and to note the sounds it afforded on percussion by the hand, or what is called immediate auscultation. His Latin treatise excited but little attention, until it was translated and illustrated by Corvisart, in 1808; when it soon led the way to Laennec's great improvement of aiding the ear by the stethoscope, or mediate auscultation. This latter practice, which has so greatly aided the diagnosis of inter-
Avenches, was employed at Edinburgh several years before it was in general use in other parts of Great Britain. Avenbrugger was born at Grätz in 1722, and died in 1809.