Laënnec, René Théophile Hyacinthe (1781-1826)

French physician, inventor of the stethoscope 1816. He introduced the new diagnostic technique of auscultation in his book Traité de l'auscultation médiaté 1819, which quickly became a medical classic. Laënnec was born in Quimper, Brittany. As a teenager he worked in hospitals during the French Revolution; later he studied medicine at the Ecole Pratique in Paris. He was appointed personal physician to Cardinal Fesch, uncle of Napoleon I. In 1812-13, with France at war, Laënnec took charge of the wards in the Salpetrière Hospital reserved for Breton soldiers. On the restoration of the monarchy, he became physician to the Necker Hospital, retiring 1818. In 1822 he was appointed professor at the Collège de France. Laënnec was interested in emphysema, tuberculosis, and physical signs of chest diseases. Although auscultation had been known since the days of Hippocrates, it was always done by the 'direct' method, which was often inconvenient. Laënnec introduced the 'mediate' method by using a hollow wooden tube for listening to the lungs, and a solid wooden rod to listen to the heart. He called it a stethoscope from the Greek stethos 'chest'.