Ординатура / Хирургия / Библиотека им академика М.И. Перельмана / Книга_2612_Библиотеки_им_академика_М_И_Перельмана

Laennec stethoscope of era when the blanket diagnosis of ‘hysteria’ could be given to women presenting with almost any symptom, it was to Laennec’s credit that he sought a more sophisticated method of examination. He was unable to elicit physical signs in the female chest by percussion and application of the hand due to breast tissue and subcutaneous fat. Direct auscultation using the ear was ‘as uncomfortable for the doctor as it was for the patient’ and unacceptable to a Catholic bachelor. And so an improvised rolled- up piece of paper was honed and perfected to become a ‘pectrolique’, a ‘medical cornet’, and a ‘thoraciscope’ before finally being named the stethoscope. Despite unfavour­able peer review, ‘there is something even ludicrous in a grave physician formally lis­tening through a long tube applied to the patient’s thorax, as if the disease within were a living being that could communi­cate its condition to the sense without’, its utility meant that the stethoscope be­came the hallmark of the medical pheno­type, slung conventionally around the neck. Perhaps Laennec used one himself to ‘scope’ his ‘stethos’ (chest) before dying of tuberculosis.