The Stethoscope Days

As a child, I loved to steal my father’s stethoscope. I would half-strangle family members as I played doctor, listening to the sounds of a heartbeat. Eventually my dad bequeathed his old stethoscope to me. It was now official—I was a doctor.

But like most seven-year-olds, I never spared a thought to the way the instrument was created, or how or why it worked. Not until recently (today, to be specific) did I revisit those old memories of the stethoscope days. And being much older now, I not only wanted, but needed, an explanation.

I was surprised to find that the stethoscope was invented by a lucky accident. René Laennec, a French physician living in the early 1800s, was examining a woman with a heart affliction. He was reluctant to put his ear to her chest, partly due to her stoutness and partly to the present standards of modesty. Instead he rolled up a sheaf of paper, pressed it to the woman’s chest, and placed his ear to the opposite end. “I was pleased to find that I could thereby perceive the action of the heart in a manner much more clear and distinct than I had ever been able to do by the immediate application of my ear,” he wrote in the classic treatise De l'Auscultation Médiate (1). Little did Laennec know that he just created the first stethoscope.

The stethoscope was among the first technological aids in the medical field. The invention revolutionized physical examinations, and to this day, remains the main instrument used for non-invasive investigations (2). One thought and one man led to this discovery—that is what I love about bioengineering. If I could pick one part of biomedical history to return to, it would be the moment Laennec rolled up that piece of paper. Simple, but revolutionary—and isn’t that the way all inventions begin?

1. Mikkelson, David. "Stethoscope." snopes.com. Urban Legends Reference Pages, 12 May 2009. Web. 13 Sept. 2009. .
2. Wijesinghe, Manique. "Stethoscopes." Student BMJ Archive. BMJ Publishing Group, 14 July 2006. Web. 13 Sept. 2009. .