ed Traite d'Auscultation Mediate,(2) a work
which forms one of the landmarks of scientific medicine. By mediate
auscultation is meant, of course, the interrogation of the chest with
the aid of the little instrument already referred to, an instrument
which its originator thought hardly worth naming until various barbarous
appellations were applied to it by others, after which Laennec decided
to call it the stethoscope, a name which it has ever since retained.

In subsequent years the form of the stethoscope, as usually employed,
was modified and its value augmented by a binauricular attachment,
and in very recent years a further improvement has been made through
application of the principle of the telephone; but the essentials of
auscultation with the stethoscope were established in much detail by
Laennec, and the honor must always be his of thus taking one of the
longest single steps by which practical medicine has in our century
acquired the right to be considered a rational science. Laennec's
efforts cost him his life, for he died in 1826 of a lung disease
acquired in the course of his hospital practice; but even before this
his fame was universal, and the value of his method had been recognized
all over the world. Not long after, in 1828, yet another French
physician, Piorry, perfected the method of percussion by introducing
the custom of tapping, not the chest directly, but the finger or a small
metal or hard-rubber plate held against the chest-mediate percussion, in
short. This perfected the methods of physical diagnosis of diseases of
the chest in all essentials; and from that day till this percussion
and auscultation have held an unquestioned place in the regular
armamentarium of the physician.

Coupled with the new method of physical diagnosis in the effort to
substitute knowledge for guess-work came the studies of the experimental
physiologists--in particular, Marshall Hall in England and Francois
Magendie in France; and the joint efforts of these various workers
led presently to the abandonment of those severe and often irrational
depletive methods--blood-letting and the like--that had previously
dominated medical practice. To this end also the "statistical method,"
introduced by Louis and his followers, largely contributed; and by the
close of the first third of our century the idea was gaining ground that
the province of therapeutics is to aid nature in combating disease, and
that this may often be accompli