Who found the stethoscope
Long before Hippocrates (ca. 460-380 B.C.) taught his disciples the
importance of listening to breath sounds, references to it appeared in
the Ebers papyrus (ca. 1500 B.C.) and the Hindu Vedas (ca. 1500-1200 B.C).
But it was not until the early 19th century that physicians began to
systematically explore the precise clinical meanings of both breath and
heart sounds by correlating data gathered during patient examinations
with what was ultimately discovered on the autopsy table.
René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec
This was the period when Paris reigned as the international centre
for all things medical. Drawing from a system of hospitals affording
limitless access to what was then referred to as "clinical material,"the
Paris medical school boasted a talented faculty that represented the
vanguard of medicine.
One of the brightest stars in this firmament was the man credited
with creating the stethoscope, René Théophile Hyacinthe
Laënnec(1781-1826). Before he assumed the position of chief of service
at the teeming Necker Hospital in 1816, Laënnec became adept at a
technique called percussion, which involves striking the chest with
one's fingertips in search of pathologic processes.
 One day in the fall of 1816, Laënnec was scheduled to examine a young
woman who had been "labouring under general symptoms of diseased heart."
He was running late, and so took a shortcut through the courtyard of
the Louvre, where a group of laughing children playing atop a pile of
old timber caught his attention.
A pair of youngsters toying with a long, narrow wooden beam
especially entranced Laënnec. While one child held the beam to his ear,
the other tapped nails against the opposite end; all had a jolly good
time transmitting sound.
Whether or not this instructive event ever occurred, Laënnec would
later record that his invention was inspired by the science of acoustics
and, in particular, the fact that sound is "conveyed through certain
solid bodies, as when we hear the scratch of a pin at one end of a piece
of wood, on applying our ear to the other." Upon entering his patient's
room, Laënnec asked for a quire of paper and rolled it into a cylinder.
Placing it against the patient's chest, the doctor was amazed to find
how well he could hear the sound of the patient's heartbeat. It was with
this idea in mind that the stethoscope was made. -Internet |
