LAEN NEC, RI Nh-T1lE0PllILE-HYACINTiIE, was born at Quimper, in Lower Brittany, in 1781. The first part of his medical education was conducted by his uncle, Dr. Laeunec, a physician of repute at Nantes, and in 1800 he went to Paris, where he attended the several medical courses, and attached himself to the Heopital de Is Charit4, of which Corvisart was the chief physician. In 1814 he took the degree of Doctor of Medicine, being already distinguished as well for his literary acquiremeuts as for his professional industry and talent. In the same year he became chief editor of the 'Journal de Medicine,' to which he had communicated several excellent papers, both on healthy and morbid anatomy. Having obtained considerable reputation, both in private practice and by his lectures and writings', he was appointed in 1816 chief physician to the Hopital Necker, and it was there that he soon after made the rat:Mirk able and important discovery of mediate auscultation. From this time ha devoted himself unceasingly to the perfecting of his new system of diagnosis. In June 1818 he read his first memoir on it to the Academy of Sciences, and in the following year he published his Tread de l'Auscultation Mediate.' But the labour necessary for its accomplishment so injured his health, which was naturally very delicate, that he was immediately afterwards obliged to resign all his studies as well as a large private practice, and to leave Paris for his native province. He returned in 1821, with his health reetored, and having resumed his duties, he was soon after appointed professor of medicine in the College of France. In 1822 he was chosen pro fessor of clinical medicine, and he regularly delivered the lectures at La Charit6 till 1S26, when, after the publication of a second edition of his work, his health again failed him. Indications of consumption were discovered by means of the art he had himself invented ; and although by retiring to Brittany ho seemad again for a time recruited, he died of consumption in the same year.
Laennec's work on mediate auscultation is undoubtedly the most important which the present century has produced in medical science.
But it must be remembered that only a small portion of his high reputation is due to the discovery of the stethoscope, although from the tone of his work it is evident that he rested chiefly upon that as the basis of his future fame. He, with many of Corvisart's pupils, had long been in the habit not only of using percussion as a means of diagnosis, but of applying tha ear directly to the chest : the stethoscope was merely a convenient auxiliary for the accomplishment of the same purpose which they had in view, but ao little essential that many of the best physicians now employ it only when the direct application of the ear is personally inconvenient. Had the stethoscope been invented by any one of less genius and fitness for the study of diseases than Laennec, it would probably have fallen into the same neglect as the more original discovery of the value of percussion by Aveobrugger had till his work was translated and his practice imitated by Corvisart. The invention however of a convenient auxiliary was the fortunate means of leading Laenneo to apply himself to the special study of the diseases of the cheat ; and he so far elucidated their pathology that those diseases, which at the beginning of this century were involved in the greatest obscurity, are now the most completely and clearly known of ell which fall within the province of the physician, who now studies them with the ear with almost as great accuracy and confidence as the surgeon can iuveatigate the diseases of which he takes charge, with the eye or the hand.
Laennec'e other publications, though thrown into the shade by his great work, fully maintain his reputation. The chief of them are published in the 'Dictiounaire des Sciences Medicales,' in the articles ' Anatousie Pathologique," Ascarides," Cartilages Accidentels; Degeneration," Desorganization," Detrachyceros," Encephaloide, 'Filaire.' A ' Life of Laenuec ' by Dr. Forbes is prefixed to his Translation of the ' Traits de TAusenhation Mediate.'