Happy Birthday, Dr. Laënnec: The Karabots Junior Fellows Commemorate 200 Years of the Stethoscope

Today is the 235th birthday of , the inventor of one of the mainstays of the medical professional's toolkit: the stethoscope. As it turns out, 2016 also marks the 200th anniversary of the stethoscope.

In honor of the device's bicentennial, the hosted an exhibition of some of the stethoscopes in the College of Physicians of Philadelphia's vast collection. There were also stethoscopes on loan from Thomas Jefferson University Archives and three private collections. On display were stethoscopes past and present, including one owned by and both an original and a more modern facsimile of Laënnec's original design.

Students in the Karabots Junior Fellows Program were on hand to examine the collection, learning facts about the stethoscope from our very own CEPI Director Jacqui Bowman who organized the exhibition in collaboration with George Davis, MD.

After exploring the exhibit, the Fellows broke into groups to try their hand at conducting their own auscultations (the technical term for an examination with a stethoscope). They also compared past and present technology by experimenting with a recreation of a Civil War stethoscope in an attempt to learn which was more efficient at detecting a heartbeat.

In March 2016, look out for a mini exhibit on monaural stethoscopes in our CEPI display case near the Koop Education Center here at the College of Physicians.