Listening to the Body Electric - continued...

Inspired by his teacher, Corvisart, René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec (1781 - 1826) invented a tube-shaped listening device around 1816/17. Shortly thereafter, Laënnec called this device a stethoscope, i.e. "chest-explorer." The purpose of the wooden tube was straight forward, it allowed for "mediated auscultations" (auscultations médiates). One could say it offered an auditory "glimpse" into the human body.

Stethoscope acc. to Laënnec. Taken from: Gscheidlen, Richard. 1876. Physiologische Methodik, p. 611/612

At that time, Laënnec was working in one of the public hospitals in Paris. This fact was crucial to the development of his technique. The clinic became a laboratory space allowing for an empirical approach to medical knowledge. During his work at Necker hospital, Laënnec started to auscultate about one hundred patients every day. He was able to develop a vocabulary for abnormal and pathological sounds which he linked to physical alterations of the body (lesions) found by dissection, i. e. tubercles in the lungs. As a consequence, Laënnec transformed sounds characterized by distinct acoustical properties into positive facts or as he put it, "pathognomonic signs" (Duffin 1998, p. 138). In other words, the sounds identified by Laënnec shed light on a domain that had been inaccessible beforehand.