Josef Skoda, a resident of Pilsen, Bohemia, became the leading clinician of the New Vienna School of medicine, and an exponent of the school's therapeutic nihilism, particularly in regard to the prevailing conservative ideas concerning disease causation then in vogue at the University of Vienna. In 1847, Skoda became the first medical teacher in Vienna to lecture in German. He taught for nearly his entire life at the Allegemeines Krankenhaus. Contemporaries remembered Skoda as a portly and rather cold and rigid bachelor who made few warm personal friendships. It is said he put up with a peculiar wardrobe for much of his life to avoid causing offense to his tailor, whom he considered a personal friend. He is also remembered for having once sued a clergyman to collect a debt.

In 1839, Skoda published his treatise on percussion and auscultation. In it he attempts to classify the sounds in the...