 | Early monaural stethoscope, ca.1865
From collections of the
Thomas Jefferson University Archives |
The inventor of the stethoscope, Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec (1781-1826) was born at Quimper, Brittany on February 17, 1781. While this invention was unquestionably one of his greatest contributions to medicine, Laennec also studied and explored physical signs within the chest that corresponded to numerous diseases. Today, many of the modern procedures for chest examination and terminology can be directly attributed to Laennec's work. Laennec studied medicine at the L'Hotel Dieu (Nantes) as well as at the L'Ecole de Medecine (Paris) with Jean Nicholas Corvisart. It was in 1816 during his tenure as chief physician to the Necker Hospital that Laennec invented the stethoscope - at first only a sheet of rolled paper. As the story goes, called in to examine an obese female patient with symptoms of heart disease, Laennec was unable to perform direct auscultation. By rolling paper into a cylinder, he found he could hear the heart sounds without directly touching the patient. In fact, he learned he could actually hear the sounds better using this method. Laennec published his findings in De l'Auscultation Mediate (1819) a work many scholars consider one of the top ten contributions to the science of medicine. Over time, De l'Auscultation passed through several editions including printings in Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. By 1929, there were a recorded 19 printings between 1819 and 1839. The most recent printing occurred in 1962 when a reprint of the 1821 English translation was published in New York. Over time, Laennec's invention evolved into a wooden tube divided into two portions that screwed together along with a chest-piece. The next 60 years included much experimentation with the basic design; mainly concentrating on enlarging the ear piece and thinning down the stem. However, by the end of the 19th century the binaural stethoscope utilizing a rubber tube in each ear came into vogue and Laennec's invention passed into medical history. Laennec's Stethoscope From De l'Auscultation Mediate (1819)
Figure (1) Instrument assembled
(2) (3) Two forms of the instrument in longitudinal section
(4) Detachable chest piece
(5) Ear piece unscrewed
(6) Transverse section |  |
After the Necker Hospital, Laennec received an appointment to the College de France in 1822. The following year he became the professor of internal medicine in the Paris Faculty, a post he held until his 1826 death at age 45 from tuberculosis. Although Laennec's life and career were short, his dedication to medicine and his willingness to share his ideas and methods with his colleagues in France and abroad includes his name among the greatest physicians of all time. Related Links: |
