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Updated: May 12, 2025
The importance of distinguishing between syphilis among the sick and among the well is often overlooked. For example, Landouzy, in the Laënnec clinic in Paris, estimated recently that in the patients of this clinic, which deals with general medicine, 15 to 18 per cent of the women and 21 to 28 per cent of the men had syphilis.
There are plenty of torrents to be crossed in its journey; but their stepping-stones are measured by the stride of man, and not of woman. Women are more subject than men to atrophy of the heart. So says the great medical authority, Laennec. Incurable cases of this kind used to find their hospitals in convents. We have the disease in New England, but not the hospitals. I don't like to think of it.
Before Laennec, the examination of a patient had been largely by sense of sight, supplemented by that of touch, as in estimating the degree of fever, or the character of the pulse.
The next day, I see, in a chart in the village school-room, 'Laennec, inventor of the stethoscope; and, the day following, I find and read his biography in a volume that I happen to take up to pass five minutes. And yet we say 'by chance.
There are plenty of torrents to be crossed in its journey; but their stepping-stones are measured by the stride of man, and not of woman. Women are more subject than men to atrophy of the heart. So says the great medical authority, Laennec. Incurable cases of this kind used to find their hospitals in convents. We have the disease in New England, but not the hospitals. I don't like to think of it.
Auscultation is several times mentioned and described by the Hippocratic physicians, who used the direct method of listening and not the mediate method devised by Laennec. There are, however, certain cases in which the modern physician still finds the older non-instrumental Hippocratic method superior.
We cannot forget Corvisart's observation of the frequency with which diseases of the heart were noticed as the consequence of the terrible emotions produced by the scenes of the great French Revolution. Laennec tells the story of a convent, of which he was the medical director, where all the nuns were subjected to the severest penances and schooled in the most painful doctrines.
Auenbrugger's "Inventum novum" of percussion, recognized by Corvisart, extended the field; but the discovery of auscultation by Laennec, and the publication of his work "De l'Auscultation Mediate," 1819, marked an era in the study of medicine. The clinical recognition of individual diseases had made really very little progress; with the stethoscope begins the day of physical diagnosis.
Among the most important measures in which he learns to acquire facility is that of auscultation. This useful process has come specially into vogue since the invention of the stethoscope in 1819 by Laennec, who derived valuable hints for it from the Hippocratic writings.
You have only to read Cullen's description of inflammation of the lungs or of the bowels, and compare it with such as you may find in Laennec or Watson, to see the immense gain which diagnosis and prognosis have derived from general anatomy.
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