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René Laënnec Facts & Worksheets

René Laënnec was a French physician who invented the stethoscope. This invention allowed him to pioneer non-invasive diagnosis and helped progress the diagnosis of chest diseases.

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René Laënnec was a French physician who invented the stethoscope. This invention allowed him to pioneer non-invasive diagnosis and helped progress the diagnosis of chest diseases. He coined several medical terms that are still used by physicians today.

See the fact file below for more information on the René Laënnec or alternatively, you can download our 27-page René Laënnec worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

LAËNNEC’S EARLY LIFE

  • René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laënnec was born on February 17, 1781 in Quimper, Brittany, France. He was baptized as “Théophile-René-Marie-Hyacinthe Laënnec”.
  • His father sent him and his brother to live with his uncle, Dr. Guillaume Laënnec, when his mother died of tuberculosis because he did not have any interest in his children. His uncle was the dean of medicine at the University of Nantes.
  • René was sickly as a child. He had lassitude and repeated instances of fever. Some historians claimed that he also had asthma. Despite his constant illness, he was described as a gifted student.
  • His father discouraged young René from following in his uncle’s footsteps. However, during the counterrevolutionary revolts in the region, Laënnec started to work in a hospital where he learned how to apply surgical dressings and care for patients at Hotel-Dieu in Nantes.

EDUCATION

  • In 1800, he ultimately decided against his father’s will and pursued an education in medicine at the Hôpital de la Charité in Paris.
  • He received instruction from famous anatomists and physicians such as Guillaume Dupuytren, known for alleviating Dupuytren contracture, and Jean-Nicolas Corvisart-Desmarets, instrumental in the re-introduction of percussion during the French Revolution. From the latter, Laënnec learned to use sound as a diagnostic aid.
  • In 1802, he conducted studies of peritonitis, amenorrhea, prostate gland, and tubercle lesions. In 1804, while he was still a student, he gave the first lecture on melanoma. He graduated in the same year. He continued his research as a faculty member of the Society of the School of Medicine in Paris.

BEING RELIGIOUS

  • He became devoted to Roman Catholicism. This led to his appointment as a personal physician to the French ambassador to the Vatican in Rome and the half-brother of Napoleon, Joseph Cardinal Fesch.
  • Laënnec restored faith in his religion was viewed positively by royalists but was criticized by his colleagues as it contradicted the views of most academicians.
  • His devotion to his religion drove him to find better ways to help the poor. Laënnec took charge of the wards for wounded soldiers at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris during the Napoleonic Wars.
  • When the monarchy returned in 1816, Laënnec was appointed as a physician at the Necker Hospital in Paris, a small facility with a poor reputation. He developed his stethoscope while working there.

THE DISCOVERY OF STETHOSCOPE

  • Laënnec wrote his famous Treatise titled De l’Auscultation Médiate, where he described how he got the idea of making the stethoscope.
  • In his first year at Necker Hospital, a young woman who he thought was laboring under the symptoms of a diseased heart, came to him for consultation, but because of her great size, case percussion and hand application could not help him. He was also embarrassed to do direct auscultation because of her gender and age.
  • He remembered a well-known acoustic whereby one can hear the scratch of a pin at one end of a piece of wood by placing the ear to the other end.
  • Laënnec rolled a quire of paper into a kind of cylinder. He put one end to the region of the heart and the other to his ear. He was pleased to find out that he could perceive the heart’s action much more clearly than when he had to apply his ear directly.
  • He added that he saw schoolchildren playing with long hollow sticks where they held the end of the stick, and the other children would scratch the pin on the other end. The stick transmitted the amplified scratch. Laënnec was also a flutist, which helped him understand better how to create do his invention.
  • His first stethoscope was a 25 cm by 2.5 cm hollow wooden cylinder. He later refined it to comprise three detachable parts consisting of a funnel-shaped cavity to augment the sound.
  • Laënnec pioneered a non-invasive diagnostic tool. He correlated the sounds captured by his instrument from his chest patients as he followed them from their bedside to the autopsy table.
  • He was the first to distinguish and discuss the terms rales, rhonchi, crackles, and egophony, which doctors use nowadays in their physical exams and diagnosis.
  • In 1819, he presented his research on his invention to the Academy of Sciences in Paris and published De l’auscultation médiate ou Traité du Diagnostic des Maladies des Poumon et du Coeur, in two volumes.
  • A British physician and professor of medicine, Benjamin Ward Richardson, ranked this publication with the original work of Vesalius, Harvey, and Hippocrates.
  • Laënnec named his instrument stethoscope from the Greek words stethos, meaning chest, and skopos, which means examination. He also coined the phrase mediate auscultation or indirect listening. The standard practice at that time was directly placing the physician’s ear on someone’s chest or immediate auscultation.
  • Not all doctors immediately accepted the stethoscope when it was introduced. A professor of medicine even stated, “He that hath ears to hear, let him use his ears and not a stethoscope”. However, Laënnec referred to his invention as the “greatest legacy of my life”.

OTHER MEDICAL CONTRIBUTION

  • Laënnec was also considered the father of thoracic medicine or chest medicine due to his revolutionary research in respiratory illnesses. His invention of the stethoscope played a crucial role in the progress of the diagnosis of chest diseases.
  • He was the first to describe the clinical and auscultatory findings of pneumonia, bronchiectasis, pleurisy, emphysema, and pneumothorax. He was able to classify different pulmonary conditions, which physicians used until today.
  • He described and identified different lung diseases. He was the first to use several medical terms, such as Laënnec’s cirrhosis and “melanose”, which he eventually changed to melanoma.
  • He researched tuberculosis and wrote A Treatise on the Disease of the Chest. It focused on the chest diseases, such as tuberculosis, its symptoms, and what part of the body it affects. He also discussed its diagnostics called Pectoriloquy.

HEALTH CONDITION

  • Laënnec was in frail health most of his life. While he was writing his Treatise, his health worsened, and he was forced to resign from his medical profession before its publication. He left Paris and spent two years at the small family estate in Breton. He got to experience living in the countryside.
  • In November 1821, he was back in Paris and ready to resume his old life as a physician and academic. After only a year, he was sole professor of medicine and royal lecturer at the College de France. He became a member of the Academy of Medicine in 1823 and a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1824.
  • He moved his clinical work to Charite and became a highly reputed teacher. He made Paris the world hub of medical studies as thousands of students from different countries would attend his lectures and work with him in the autopsy room and hospital rounds.
  • He also got married on December 16, 1824, to a widow and his previous housekeeper, Jacquette Guichard. She got pregnant, and Laënnec was excited to see his first child.
  • However, all this work and these accomplishments exhausted him. He was also writing his second edition of Treatise and experienced emotional stress when his wife had a miscarriage and lost their baby.
  • He was then diagnosed by his nephew, Meriadec Laënnec, who heard the fateful sounds of tuberculosis using Laënnec’s stethoscope. He went back to Brittany and spent his last days in his beloved home. He died on August 13, 1826.

René Laënnec Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about René Laënnec across 27 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use René Laënnec worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about René Laënnec who was a French physician who invented the stethoscope. This invention allowed him to pioneer non-invasive diagnosis and helped progress the diagnosis of chest diseases. He coined several medical terms that are still used by physicians today.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • René Laënnec Facts
  • Stethoscope Inventor
  • Other Contributions
  • Laënnec’s Life
  • Important Invention
  • Devoted Catholic
  • After the Discovery
  • Laënnec’s People
  • Modern Stethoscope
  • Stethoscope Story
  • To Believe or Not to Believe?

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