{"id":357,"date":"2010-11-18T13:50:52","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T17:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/?p=357"},"modified":"2010-11-19T10:25:24","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T14:25:24","slug":"rene-laennec-stethoscope-inventer-flutist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/2010\/11\/18\/rene-laennec-stethoscope-inventer-flutist\/","title":{"rendered":"Ren\u00e9 Laennec: Flutist, Stethoscope Inventer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>French doctor Ren\u00e9 Laennec (1781-1826) had a sensitive ear; as a flutist he knew how to <em>listen.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In 1816, he came upon an idea that would help him to hear the internal sounds of the body.\u00a0 He rolled up sheets of paper into a cylinder and pressed one end to a patient&#8217;s abdomen and the other to his (Laennec&#8217;s) ear.<\/p>\n<p>Laennec was also hoping to maintain a dignified distance between himself and the patient, some of whom were women.\u00a0 By using the cylinder, he avoided placing his ear directly on the patient.\u00a0 He soon replaced the paper cylinder with a wooden one.\u00a0 It is impossible to overstate the importance of this diagnostic tool which opened the human body to medicine.<\/p>\n<p>If he had never played the flute, would he have had this insight?<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment364\" style=\"width: 586px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment364\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-364 \" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/files\/2010\/11\/Rene-Theophile-Hyacinthe_Laennec_1781-1826_with_stethoscope.jpg\" alt=\"Rene-Theophile-Hyacinthe_Laennec_(1781-1826)_with_stethoscope\" width=\"576\" height=\"384\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/files\/2010\/11\/Rene-Theophile-Hyacinthe_Laennec_1781-1826_with_stethoscope.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/files\/2010\/11\/Rene-Theophile-Hyacinthe_Laennec_1781-1826_with_stethoscope-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/files\/2010\/11\/Rene-Theophile-Hyacinthe_Laennec_1781-1826_with_stethoscope-1024x682.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment364\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Public Domain Image from Wikimedia Commons. Artist unknown. <\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>French doctor Ren\u00e9 Laennec (1781-1826) had a sensitive ear; as a flutist he knew how to listen. In 1816, he came upon an idea that would help him to hear the internal sounds of the body.\u00a0 He rolled up sheets of paper into a cylinder and pressed one end to a patient&#8217;s abdomen and the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1681,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4195,4193,4194],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1681"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":392,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions\/392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/bjuarez\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}