Name/Title
LAENNEC STETHOSCOPE, REPLICAEntry/Object ID
2020.19.37Description
1816 - Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec, (1781-1826), a French physician, is credited for inventing the first stethoscope. Examining a female patient by putting an ear to her chest could be awkward and Laennec found himself in such a situation. So on September 16, 1816, in a burst of inspiration, Laennec took his student's notebook, rolled it up into a cylinder and listened to her chest. He was inspired by the memories of children playing. He recalled children listening at one end of a beam of wood to hear the sound as another child rubbed the opposite end. The story goes on to say that the next day, Laennec, purchased thick pasteboard to make a more "proper" auscultation devices. It was a monaural (one ear) model that consisted of one tube and was used on one ear. Laennec called his new invention le cylinder (the tube). He later chose the name stethoscope for Greek stethos (chest) and scope (to observe.) Laennec was the first to describe the auscultatory signs we still use in medicine today. He coined terms such as "bruit" (turbulent sound over an artery), "rales" (crackling noise in the lung) and "egophony" (resonant sound in the lung indicating pneumonia). His stethoscope allowed him to study many diseases of the chest, including tuberculosis which he died from in 1826. By this time, the stethoscope was used almost universally in France and Germany
