Abstract
Auscultation with just the ear placed on the surface of the patient's body was already used in the Middle Ages. However, the information obtained in this way was difficult to locate more precisely and this to use diagnostically.
In 1816, the French physician René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec (b.17/02/1781 in the town of Quimper, France) first used a rolled sheet of paper to listen to the heart of a sick patient, with which he could hear heart sounds and other sounds much more clearly. Subsequently, he experimented with different materials in the production of listening cylinders.
Those made of paper, wood or Indian cane have been found to be most suitable for transmitting sound. In the end, he chose the wood of boxwood as the best raw material.
He labeled his listening instrument le cylendre. It was only later that the name stethoscope was adopted.
Laënnec was appointed professor of medicine at the College de France in 1822 and a year later professor at the Hopital de la Charité in Paris. He died on 13.
August 1826 in Kerlouan of advanced tuberculosis. He is considered the father of clinical auscultation.