René Laennec

René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec ( born February 17, 1781 Quimper, † August 13 1826 in Kerlouarnec (Finistère ) ) was a French physician and inventor of the stethoscope.

Laënnec studied in the hospitals in Nantes and then there was in 1799 a surgeon at the Western Army. He then studied further under Jean- Nicolas Corvisart in Paris and in 1816 a doctor at the Hospital Necker in Paris. Here he gathered his observations on auscultation with the stethoscope invented by him to lung and heart diseases, which he 1819 and later ( 1826) in his work Traité de l' auscultation Mediate (Paris 1819, 2 volumes; 4th edition of Andral, 1836, 3 volumes; German of Meissen, Leipzig 1822) published.

In 1823 he became a professor at the Collège de France and the following year professor of medical clinic. Laënnec laid to the exact physical diagnosis of diseases of the chest next to Leopold Auenbrugger, the discoverer of the percussion, the reason and thereby paved the way for the progress of medicine in this area.

1868 was erected to him in his birthplace, a still image.

In addition to the invention of the stethoscope Laënnec is for the initial characterization and at first misclassification known ( as a malignant neoplasm ) of the liver cirrhosis.