Auscultation and percussion / by Joseph Skoda ; translated from the 4th edition by W.O. Markham.

  • Skoda, Joseph, 1805-1881.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Auscultation and percussion / by Joseph Skoda ; translated from the 4th edition by W.O. Markham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    and a clear-seeing observer—of one, indeed, who has had vast experience, and who manifests the rare quality of a will and a power to subject theory to the results of prac- tice and experiment. Skoda will not be found to offer vague opinions, or to indulge in flights of fancy; he comes before us les pieces a la main; the grounds on which his doctrines rest are plainly exposed, so that there is op- portunity for those who reject them to show, either that his experiments or his data are faulty, or that his deduc- tions are not warranted by his premises; happily, his ex- periments are generally of such a character as to permit of being readily repeated by any one possessed of an or- dinary degree of skill. It is certainly no slight testimony in favour of the value of Skoda's opinions, that they should, after having been overlooked, or ignored as theoretical and imaginative, during the long period which has elapsed since the publi- cation of the first edition of his treatise, have quietly worked their way, and, as it were, forced themselves upon the attention of medical observers; in this respect, at least, his work offers a marked contrast to many modern ephe- meride.1 I might also add, that those who are best ac- quainted with his labours, appear also to be his warmest admirers. No one, I should imagine, can have paid much atten- tion to the subject of physical examination of diseases of the thorax, without feeling that a vast deal of difficulty and obscurity is still attached to it (more, indeed, than our pride willingly permits us to confess,) and that we 'Was gl'anzt, ist fur den Augenblich geboren, Das Aechte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren. Goethe.