In 1816, French physician Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec had a young woman on his exam table, and no idea what to do with her. She’d come in complaining of chest pains, and their conversation and ...

In a monthly column for PBS NewsHour, Dr. Howard Markel revisits moments that changed the course of modern medicine, like the invention of the stethoscope. Photo By BSIP/UIG via Getty Images. Long ...

For all the advances in medical diagnostics made over the last two centuries of modern medicine, from the ability to peer deep inside the body with the help of superconducting magnets to harnessing ...

To hear a patient's heart, doctors used to just put an ear up to a patient's chest and listen. Then, in 1816, things changed. Lore has it that 35-year-old Paris physician Rene Laennec was caring for a ...

Is high-tech imaging replacing rubber tubing and ear buds? Doctors used to just put an ear up to a patient’s chest and listen. Then, in 1816, things changed. Thirty-five-year-old Paris physician Rene ...

Credit a modest 19th-century Parisian doctor for having invented the stethoscope. In 1816, while examining a female patient with heart disease, Dr. René Laennec faced a conundrum: He needed to hear ...

No implement better visually identifies a physician than does the stethoscope, the acoustic medical device that enables medical personnel to listen to the internal sounds produced by the body.