A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



tion could be heard with almost startling distinct- 

 ness. 



The possibility of associating the varying chest 

 sounds with diseased conditions of the organs within 

 appealed to the fertile mind of Laennec as opening 

 new vistas in therapeutics, which he determined to 

 enter to the fullest extent practicable. His connec- 

 tion with the hospitals of Paris gave him full oppor- 

 tunity in this direction, and his labors of the next few 

 years served not merely to establish the value of the 

 new method as an aid to diagnosis, but laid the foun- 

 dation also for the science of morbid anatomy. In 

 1819 Laennec published the results of his labors in a 

 work called Traite d' Auscultation Mediate, 2 a work 

 which forms one of the landmarks of scientific medi- 

 cine. By mediate auscultation is meant, of course, 

 the interrogation of the chest with the aid of the lit- 

 tle instrument already referred to, an instrument 

 which its originator thought hardly worth naming 

 until various barbarous appellations were applied to 

 it by others, after which Laennec decided to call it 

 the stethoscope, a name which it has ever since re- 

 tained. 



In subsequent years the form of the stethoscope, as 

 usually employed, was modified and its value aug- 

 mented by a binauricular attachment, and in very re- 

 cent years a further improvement has been made 

 through application of the principle of the telephone ; 

 but the essentials of auscultation with the stethoscope 

 were established in much detail by Laennec, and the 

 honor must always be his of thus taking one of the 

 longest single steps by which practical medicine has in 



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