Hmmmmm, something came to mind immediately, I could be way out to sea on this one so I'll be waiting for clues to see if I'm even close. Good luck with Annabel you've got your work cut out for you.

Annette

Cool, a mystery object. It looks like a telescope or spyglass, but that would be too easy. It's hard to tell how big it is, but that's part of the plan, isn't it? It looks like white writing on the far end, and it looks so tiny that I wonder if the object may be quite big.

All guesswork, will wait for clues.

TM

Here's another version. These are not all that big. Less than a foot long, I would think, although now they are longer.

The object in question was developed by a Frenchman, Rene Laënnec. Today, it is used by everyone in his field-pretty amazing.

It is so nice out today, that I would love to take the pups on a long walk. I tried to take Annabel out for a very short walk yesterday since she is not supposed to do steps and there is no way to get to any part of the back yard without doing at least a few steps (lots of levels:deck, then several steps to one level, then lots of steps to the middle level where the walkout basement doors are, then more steps to the lowest level). Sigh. Breaks my heart-she couldn't walk more than a little way past our property line. Poor baby.

Cynthia

Oh, and stay on dry land, please! The water is too cold these days for shipping out. ;)

That second picture has me going in a totally different direction. Something used by the medical profession?

Annette

I'm thinking in the same direction as you are, Annette. The modern version would be a lot more flexible than this one.

TM

Maybe come summer when I am out of school, I will have time to find trivia that really challenges you!

Cynthia

I hear you Cyn...it is hard to find challenging questions. I have had a technically challenged day, so am only checking in now. I'll be back!!

Nancy.

I have been following along and have an idea if it is a medical device. Think I have seen the second one in use in an old movie or TV show.

Love the sleek looks of the second one. Fits my idea of minimalistic art.

Been watching the Olympic Games and agree with Michelle Obama that they are fun to watch but also very dangerous sports. Wish I had been more adventuresome in my young days but I didn't have the heart to persevere through all the injuries many of these athletes experience to reach that level. Ha,ha and no talent either

.

This post was edited by mnwsgal on Mon, Feb 24, 14 at 12:53

I hear you too, Cynthia. It would be pretty easy to come up with stumpers that no one could ever get, but it sure is hard to hit the exact happy medium of challenging but not over the top. I think you do a great job. (You too, Nancy.)

Remember, they don't have to be stumpers to be interesting and fun.

TM

Aw, you have such a big heart, TM!

So yes, you all have it. The answer is the stethoscope. Four stars and big hearts for Nancy, Tm, Annette, and Bobbie! The following is from
Clinical Medicine and Research, Marshfield Clinic.

Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laënnec (1781��"1826) was a French physician who, in 1816, invented the stethoscope.

The stethoscope may be the one instrument common to all doctors. The word stethoscope comes from the Greek words stethos, meaning chest, and skopein, meaning to explore. This instrument may even supersede the caduceus as the symbol of medicine ��" no other symbol so strongly identifies a doctor than a stethoscope dangling around the neck like a talisman. The story of how this remarkable invention came to be and the life of its inventor are described.

In September 1816, during a cool morning, while walking in the courtyard of the Le Louvre Palace in Paris, Dr. Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laënnec, a 35-year-old French physician, observed two children sending signals to each other using a long piece of solid wood and a pin. With an ear to one end, the child received an amplified sound of the pin scratching the opposite end of the wood. Later that year, Laënnec was called to a young woman with “general symptoms of a diseased heart.” Both application of his hand to the chest and percussion offered little diagnostic assistance. Laënnec was reluctant to start immediate auscultation (placing the doctor’s ear on the patient’s chest) because of the age, sex and plumpness of the patient. In this moment of embarrassment, Laënnec recalled his observation of the children’s wood borne signaling. It was this observation that inspired Laënnec’s invention of the stethoscope. He described the invention as follows (translated from French by John Forbes, 1834):

I recalled a well known acoustic phenomenon: if you place your ear against one end of a wood beam the scratch of a pin at the other end is distinctly audible. It occurred to me that this physical property might serve a useful purpose in the case I was dealing with. I then tightly rolled a sheet of paper, one end of which I placed over the precordium (chest) and my ear to the other. I was surprised and elated to be able to hear the beating of her heart with far greater clearness than I ever had with direct application of my ear. I immediately saw that this might become an indispensable method for studying, not only the beating of the heart, but all movements able of producing sound in the chest cavity.

Laënnec discovered that heart sounds could be heard more clearly and loudly using mediate auscultation rather than immediate auscultation. Laënnec spent the next 3 years testing various types of materials to make tubes, perfecting his design and listening to the chest findings of patients with pneumonia.5��"7 After careful experimenting, Laënnec decided upon a hollow tube of wood, 3.5 cm in diameter and 25 cm long, which was the forerunner of the modern stethoscope. His instrument was fitted with a plug when used to listen to the heart and to make it portable, was made in parts that could be disassembled.

Laënnec investigated the sounds made by the heart and lungs with his invention and found that his diagnoses were supported by observations made in autopsies.

Laënnec’s wooden tube was the first true stethoscope. Wooden stethoscopes were used until the latter half of the 19th century, when rubber tubing was developed.

The evolution of the stethoscope.
LIFE AND MEDICAL CAREER
Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laënnec (figure 3 ) was born at Quimper in Brittany, France on February 17, 1781. He was 5 years old when his mother succumbed to tuberculosis. His father, a lawyer, was unable to care for him and thus, he went to live with his grand-uncle, the Abbé Laënnec. As a child, Laënnec’s health was not good; he suffered from lassitude and occasional periods of pyrexia and was also thought to be asthmatic. He found consolation in music and spent his spare time playing the flute and writing poetry. Throughout his professional career in Paris, during exacerbations of his respiratory symptoms, he would steal to the countryside of Brittany for its rejuvenating fresh air. Laënnec was well educated in the classics and became well versed in Greek and Latin.

At the age of 12 he proceeded to Nantes where his uncle, Dr. Guillaume François Laënnec (1748��"1822), was Dean of the faculty of medicine at the university. Despite the turbulent times of the French Revolution, Laënnec was successful in his studies, learned English and German thoroughly and obtained a number of prizes. Laënnec was inspired by his uncle to pursue a career in medicine. In 1795, at age 14, Laënnec was already helping to care for the sick and the wounded at the Hôtel Dieu in Nantes. By the age of 18, he was serving in the Military Hospital in Nantes with the rank of third class surgeon and shortly thereafter he moved to the Hospice de la Fraternité becoming, at a young age, acquainted with clinical work, surgical dressing and treatment of patients.

Laënnec began his medical studies in Nantes under his uncle’s direction and was appointed surgeon at the Hôtel Dieu in Nantes in June 1799 at the age of 18. In 1800, Laënnec went to Paris and entered the École Pratique.

As his reputation increased, he began to give private instruction in morbid anatomy to supplement his income. Although suffering from asthma, he worked hard and announced his classification of anatomical lesions into encephaloid and cirrhous types. He also found that the tubercle lesion could be present in all organs of the body and was identical with that which had previously been thought to be limited to the lungs. He did not, however, realize that the condition was infectious.

Family troubles, the death of his uncle from tuberculosis, and financial difficulties coupled with his break with Dupuytren disturbed the continuity of Laënnec’s work and caused his health to fail. He recovered by going to Brittany and on his return to Paris, became an editor-shareholder of the Journal de Médecine. Although his private practice increased, Laënnec was disappointed in not being appointed as a senior physician at any of Paris’ major hospitals. On his own initiative, he founded the Athénée Médical in 1808, which later merged with the Société Académique de Paris. Soon afterward, he was appointed personal physician to Cardinal Joseph Fesch (1763��"1839), the uncle of Napoleon I, however the cardinal was exiled after the fall of Napoleon in 1814. During this period, Laënnec wrote several articles on pathological anatomy.

While France was at war (1812��"1813), Laënnec took charge of the wards in the Salpêtriére reserved for wounded Breton soldiers.6,7 After the monarchy’s return in 1816, Laënnec finally was offered, and gladly accepted, a position as physician at the Necker Hospital in Paris at which his most important contribution to medicine would be realized. However, owing to personal animosities, it was not until July 1822 that he was appointed to the chair and professor of medicine at the College of France. In January 1823, he became a full member of the French Academy of Medicine and professor at the medical clinic of the Charité. As a lecturer he became internationally renowned with, at times, as many as 50 doctors awaiting his arrival at the Charité Hospital. Laënnec was noted for his kindness, was beloved by his colleagues and his students, and was especially obliging towards his English-speaking students. In August 1824, he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. With these honors, his private practice increased further and soon included many distinguished persons.

As might be expected from his Breton birth and training, he was intensely religious and was a devout Catholic all his life. Laënnec married Ms. Argon in 1824, just 2 years before his untimely death at the age of 45 years. He had no children; his wife had suffered a miscarriage.

Laënnec’s health deteriorated and he grew progressively weaker, though he denied that his physical condition could be due to consumption, the name popularly used to describe phthisis or tuberculosis. By May 1826, the fever, productive cough and shortness of breath were unrelenting and forced him to leave Paris never to return. The climate of Brittany brought a temporary improvement in his health, but he died later that year.

During those last months, he asked his nephew, Mériadec, to auscultate his chest and to describe what was heard. The auscultatory findings were as alarming as they were familiar to this great chest physician who had heard the same sounds a thousand times before. By his own invention, he could no longer escape the ironic truth that he was dying from cavitating tuberculosis ��" the disease that Laënnec helped to elucidate and understand with his stethoscope would soon take his life. In his will, Laënnec bequeathed to Mériadec all his scientific papers, as well as his watch and ring, and “above all, my stethoscope, which is the best part of my legacy.” Laënnec died at Kerlouanec on August 13, 1826.

Laënnec was influenced by Corvisart’s teachings, which stressed bedside examination and autopsy studies. Corvisart, Napoleon’s great physician, translated Auenbrugger’s Inventum novum into French and published it in 1808 with a commentary reintroducing to medicine Auenbrugger’s neglected method of diagnosis by percussion of the chest. Laënnec followed up on the idea of his teacher, and after several years of careful study and observation, published his findings, laying the foundation for modern knowledge of diseases of the chest.

Aside from percussion, the other option available to the early 19th century physician was the ancient practice of direct or immediate auscultation, listening to the chest sounds and heartbeat by pressing the ear to the chest wall. Immediate auscultation was known to Hippocrates and practiced in ancient Greece, but was hardly an ideal way to examine patients because some patients were too obese for sounds to be heard, or if heard, were faint and muffled making them difficult to interpret, also some patients did not bath, others were infested with vermin and modesty was an issue, especially with female patients.

Laënnec’s introduction of mediate auscultation using a stethoscope to listen for sounds of the lungs and heart revolutionized medicine. In 1818, Laënnec presented his findings and research on the stethoscope to the Academy of Sciences. Laënnec’s essay aroused intense interest abroad with physicians throughout Europe flocking to Paris to gain first-hand experience of this new diagnostic tool.

Heart Sounds
In both of his books, the sections on the heart were not nearly as significant as that of the chest because so little of the physiology of the heart was understood at the time. However, Laënnec distinguished two heart sounds, attributing the first heart sound to ventricular systole and the second sound to atrial systole.

ARTICLE INFORMATION
Clin Med Res. 2006 September; 4(3): 230��"235.
PMCID: PMC1570491
Ariel Roguin, MD, PhD
Ariel Roguin, MD, PhD, Department of Cardiology, Rambam Medical Center, B. Rappaport - Faculty of Medicine, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 31096 Israel
Reprint Requests: Ariel Roguin, MD, PhD, Department of Cardiology, Rambam Medical Center, B. Rappaport - Faculty of Medicine, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 31096 Israel, Tel: 972-50-206-3201, Fax: 972-4-854-3451, Email: aroguin/at/technion.ac.il
Received March 28, 2006; Revised July 1, 2006; Accepted July 7, 2006.
Copyright © 2006. Clinical Medicine & Research

Good story. I had no idea when I saw the first picture, but the second one triggered the thought of the stethoscope.

Thanks a lot for the fun today, Cynthia.

TM

Ditto to that, it was fun. Thanks to those old movies once again, after seeing the second picture I was pretty sure I knew what it was.

Annette

Yes, good fun. The 'bell' shape did actually make me think of the Marx Brothers movies, or something like that. lol. And TM, you're right - stumpers are easy. I was trying to explain this to a friend the other day. I knew the question would be about the date sprouting, but how to phrase it? Even harder, how to give clues? The last bit still eludes me, but I persevere!!! lol - as do you all.

Thanks Cyn.

Nancy.

I found the question and answer interesting as well. Thanks, Cynthia.