René Laennec's stethoscope

René Laennec’s stethoscope gave doctors a new way to listen to patients – hearing their bodies, but perhaps not their voices. As Google produces a Doodle celebrating the inventor Vanessa Heggie looks at this crucial change in the relationship between doctors and their patients. It’s easy to romanticise the story of René Laennec: in 1816 the dashing doctor, faced with a young female patient with heart disease, is unable to lay his head on her breasts because of his sense of decency, and so rolls up a paper tube, creating the first version of what would become the stethoscope. Although some doctors resisted this new technology, it eventually became the iconic symbol of the doctor, used in millions of unimaginative stock photographs everywhere.
But Laennec’s invention was not just inspired by a young woman whose ‘fatness’ meant that the usual investigation – feeling the heartbeat with the hand – did not work. It came from something even more dramatic: the French Revolution. And since every drama deserves a twist ending, what was supposed to ensure liberty, equality and decent healthcare to free citizens, also changed the balance of power between patients and doctors.
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