[4] At the age of twelve, he proceeded to Nantes, where his uncle, Guillaime-François Laennec, worked in the faculty of medicine at the university.

His father (a lawyer) later discouraged him from continuing as a doctor and René then had a period of time where he took long walks in the country, danced, studied Greek, and wrote poetry.

Laennec studied medicine at the University of Paris under several famous physicians, including Dupuytren and Jean-Nicolas Corvisart-Desmarets.

[5] René Laennec wrote in the classic treatise De l'Auscultation Médiate,[6] In 1816, [he was] consulted by a young woman laboring under general symptoms of diseased heart, and in whose case percussion and the application of the hand were of little avail on account of the great degree of fatness.

The other method just mentioned direct auscultation being rendered inadmissible by the age and sex of the patient, I happened to recollect a simple and well-known fact in acoustics, ... the great distinctness with which we hear the scratch of a pin at one end of a piece of wood on applying our ear to the other.

[4] Laennec is said to have seen school children playing with a long piece of solid wood in the days leading up to his innovation.

He was therefore able to correlate sounds captured by his new instruments with specific pathological changes in the chest, in effect pioneering a new non-invasive diagnostic tool.

[7] Laënnec presented his findings and research on the stethoscope to the French Academy of Sciences, and in 1819 he published his masterpiece On Mediate Auscultation.

The stethoscope quickly gained popularity as De l'Auscultation Médiate[6] was translated and distributed across France, England, Italy, and Germany in the early 1820s.

Even the founder of the American Heart Association, L.A. Connor (1866–1950), carried a silk handkerchief with him to place on the wall of the chest for ear auscultation.

Over the years, there were bitter exchanges between Laennec and Dupuytren, the latter objecting that there was no mention of his work in this area and his role in its discovery.

Professor Benjamin Ward Richardson stated in Disciples of Aesculapius that "the true student of medicine reads Laennec's treatise on mediate auscultation and the use of the stethoscope once in two years at least as long as he is in practice.

Austin Flint, the 1884 president of the American Medical Association, said that "Laennec's life affords a striking instance among others disproving the vulgar error that the pursuit of science is unfavourable to religious faith.

In the short section "Marlake Witches", set during the Napoleonic Wars, Una meets a consumptive young lady who speaks of being treated by a French doctor, a prisoner on parole, one Rene Laennec.