Music, Mechanism, and the "Sonic Turn" in Physical Diagnosis

Abstract

The sonic diagnostic techniques of percussion and mediate auscultation advocated by Leopold von Auenbrugger and R. T. H. Laennec developed within larger musical contexts of practice, notation, and epistemology. Earlier, François-Nicolas Marquet proposed a musical notation of pulse that connected felt pulsation with heard music. Though contemporary vitalists rejected Marquet's work, mechanists such as Albrecht von Haller included it into the larger discourse about the physiological manifestations of bodily fluids and fibers. Educated in that mechanistic physiology, Auenbrugger used musical vocabulary to present his work on thoracic percussion; Laennec's musical experience shaped his exploration of the new timbres involved in mediate auscultation.

Keywords: Albrecht von Haller; François-Nicolas Marquet; Gerard van Swieten; Joseph-Jacques Ménuret de Chambaud; Leopold von Auenbrugger; R. T. H. Laennec; Théophile de Bordeu; auscultation; percussion; pulse (Western reception of Chinese theory); sonic diagnosis.