“I’m used by all physicians”
The time - the end of the
eighteenth century, the setting in Paris. The Bourbans had returned to
the throne after the fiery fiasco of the Napoleonic up start. This was
the time France was in pain. Twenty years of financial misery,
dictatorship, military murder. Pain in the pocket for the masses, pain
in the body, and pain in the spirit.
Towards the suburbs of Paris lived a middle class apothecary who
presented the world with six children. The most acceptable of these
gifts was his last son, Hyacinthe Laennce. However as Hyacinthe grew
older his father had to decide about his son’s career.
For a time he was undecided between the professions of a singer and
an apothecary. The first might give the boy satisfaction, but the second
would provide him with a living. However, medicine was in his blood. The
boy on being consulted replied that he would rather be a good medical
practitioner than a singer. So his father scraped the barrel, and got
his son apprenticed to a leading physician of the day.
 As time passed he studied hard burning the mid-night oil and became a
medical practitioner to alleviate the suffering of the sick, to set a
system which created and maintained higher standards in the profession
of medicine.
He went on making experiments in his small lab. It was my father -
Aere Hyacinthe Laennece - the French doctor, in 1816, who made me to see
the first light of this world. He found very often valuable information
about diseases in certain parts of the body can be obtained through the
change in sounds produced by them. For instance a change in the sounds
made by the rushing of blood through the valves or by closing vessels
may give important clues to different heart diseases. Similarly an
abnormality in the sounds made by air in the windpipe and air ways in
the lungs may indicate certain lung disorders.
My childhood was spent suffering in pain subject to all sorts of
experiments. My father moulded me to a foot-long perferated wooden
cylinder.
He put one end of the cylinder on to his patient’s chest and listened
to the sounds produced by the heart and the lungs, through the other
end. As he compared such sounds of different patients, he could reach
certain conclusions. As I grew into a woman, many modifications were
made on me. Basically consisting a contact piece called the chest piece
was introduced.
This is a flat chest piece for high-pitched sounds. It conducts
sounds through two flexible rubber plastic tubes which are fixed to a
pair of ear pieces which fit into the physicians ears and exclude other
sounds. The chest piece is put in contact with different parts of the
chest and the back.
Through these sounds the physicians get reliable clues regarding the
different diseases the patient might suffer from.My personal charm and
the deep sincerity of all, my actions brought all medical men and
women’s friendship - close and lasting.
I was invented as a device used by all physicians to listen to sounds
inside a patient’s body and was called a stethoscope. It is a pleasant
sight to see and I am proud when cute and handsome medical students and
doctors of every gender carry me on their shoulders walking down the
corridors of many hospitals.
Tissa Hewavitarane
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