Joseph Škoda (10 December 1805 – 13 June 1881) was a Czech physician, medical professor and dermatologist. Together with Carl Freiherr von Rokitansky, he was the founder of the Modern Medical School of Vienna. Life Škoda was born in Pilsen, Bohemia, as the second son of a locksmith. He attended the gymnasium at Pilsen, entered the University of Vienna in 1825, and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine on 10 July 1831. He first served in Bohemia as physician during the outbreak of cholera, was assistant physician in the General Hospital of Vienna, 1832–38, in 1839 city physician of Vienna for the poor, and on 13 February 1840, on the recommendation of Dr. Ludwig Freiherr von Türkheim, chairman of the Imperial Committee of Education, was appointed to the unpaid position of chief physician of the department for tuberculosis just opened in the general hospital. In 1846, thanks to the energetic measures of Carl von Rokitansky, professor of pathological anatomy, he was appointed professor of the medical clinic against the wishes of the rest of the medical faculty. In 1848 he began to lecture in German instead of Latin, being the first professor to do so. On 17 July 1848, he was elected an active member of the mathematico-physical section of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In Vienna in 1851 Škoda treated Petar II Petrovic Njegos who was suffering from pulmonary consumption, what we call today tuberculosis. Early in 1871, he retired from his professorship; the occasion was celebrated by the students and the population of Vienna by a great torchlight procession in his honour. He died in Vienna. Rokitansky called him "a light for those who study, a model for those who strive, and a rock for those who despair". Škoda's benevolent disposition is best shown by the fact that, notwithstanding his large income and the known simplicity of his lifestyle, he left a comparatively small fortune, and in his will, bequeathed legacies to a number of benevolent institutions. Joseph Škoda was an uncle to the industrialist Emil Škoda. Works Škoda's great merit lies in his development of the methods of physical investigation for diagnosis in medicine. The discovery of the method of percussion diagnosis made in 1761 by the Viennese physician, Leopold Auenbrugger (1722–1809), had been forgotten, and the knowledge of it was first revived in 1808 by the Frenchman Jean-Nicolas Corvisart (1755–1821), court physician to Napoleon I.