The first doctor created the legendary stethoscope for medical practice

In the early 19th century, Dr. Laënnec met two children who sent each other a hollow wooden tree, and he invented a medical examination instrument made of wood.

According to NCBI, a beautiful morning in September 1981, French doctor Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laënnec , then 35, was walking in the courtyard of Le Louvre Palace, Paris, when he caught two children sending a signal to each other with an empty wooden tree. One child tapped on this end of the tree and the other child on the other end listened.

Later that year, Dr. Laënnec received a young woman who had a heart problem. Initially, the doctor used the finger to touch the patient's chest to diagnose the disease. Embarrassed by the girl, he rolled the paper to create a tube, then placed it on her chest. Laënnec was surprised when the scroll could amplify heart sounds without physical contact, helping him to correctly diagnose and listen to the body's heartbeat clearly.

This breakthrough led to him inventing the first stethoscope made from wood pipes .

Laënnec spent the next three years experimenting with making stethoscope with different materials. Finally, the doctor perfected his design with a wooden tube, 3.5 cm in diameter and 25 cm in length to check the patient's chest health.

After much success in sound diagnosis of the heart, lungs, stethoscope is used to assist in autopsy.

Laënnec published the first study of sound in the human body. He is considered the father of clinical diagnosis and wrote the first descriptions of bronchitis, cirrhosis. He classified lung conditions such as pneumonia, bronchiectasis, pleurisy, emphysema, pneumothorax and other lung diseases by his invention.

Dr. Laënnec began introducing many other clinical terms related to stethoscope, which are used today.

Picture 1 of The first doctor created the legendary stethoscope for medical practice
Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laënnec (1781-1826) was the first doctor in the world to invent a stethoscope.

Dr. Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laënnec was born in Quimper in Brittany, France in 1781. Mother died of tuberculosis at the age of five, Laënnec lived with her uncle, then the dean of a university medical school. In her childhood, Laënnec's health was not good, her physical movements were slow, she often suffered from abdominal pain and severe coughing. He found comfort in music, spent free time to play the flute and write poetry.

Laënnec is inspired by his uncle to pursue a medical career. In 1795, at the age of 14, Laënnec helped look after the sick and injured people at the Dieu hotel in Nantes. At the age of 18, he served in the Military Hospital as a third-rate surgeon. Later, he became acquainted with clinical work, major surgery and treatment of patients.

Within a year, Laënnec won the first prize in both medicine and surgery at medical school. In 1802, he published his first article on topics such as peritonitis, amenorrhea and liver disease. Gradually becoming more known, Laënnec began to learn about anatomy and had research on anatomical pathology.

In the last months of his life, he asked his nephew, Mériadec, to stimulate his chest and describe what he heard with a stethoscope. He died of tuberculosis, the disease that Laënnec had unraveled with his stethoscope.

In the will, Laënnec gave the grandchild inherited all of his medical research, along with the wooden stethoscope as the most valuable relic.

Picture 2 of The first doctor created the legendary stethoscope for medical practice
The wooden stethoscope is used to diagnose clinical diseases.

Wooden stethoscope used until the second half of the nineteenth century, then the stethoscope went through many improvements and became more and more popular. Today, rubber stethoscope is commonly used, helping doctors to hear sounds in the patient's body at low, high frequency frequencies.

According to medicine, cardiac stethoscope is a mere combination of one of the most basic laws of physics, sound transmission and amplification. However, it is one of the major impacts and becomes a symbol of modern medicine.

The original goal was to create a gap between doctors and patients, now the stethoscope has become a doctor-specific tool and useful in patient care.