Re: Commemorating 2 centuries since the death of the inventor of the stethoscope (1)

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 68, No. 5, June 2026, Page 159 Letters
By: Anthony Walter, MD

Thank you, Dr Amir Dolatabadi, for an interesting article about the inventor of the stethoscope, René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec [BCMJ 2026;68:93-95,109].

In the article, Dr Dolatabadi noted that Laennec was inspired to invent the stethoscope after observing children playing in the Louvre; one child struck one end of a long wooden stick while another placed their ear at the opposite end, successfully perceiving the transmitted sound. In his Illustrated History of Medicine, Jean-Charles Sournia gave further information about the discovery of transmitted sound perception. He stated that Laennec observed a group of children whispering along pipes on a building site in the Tuileries Garden, next to the Louvre.

Evidently, the young people of Paris should be doubly credited for the medical potential of child’s play, perceived by Laennec on his strolls around the city.

It is sad, but unsurprising, that Laennec died an early death from tuberculosis, given that he spent his professional years using his invention to auscultate the chests of patients with respiratory symptoms, many of whom would have been suffering from consumption. His device could be regarded as responsible for his demise.
—Anthony Walter, MB BCh
Coldstream

This letter was submitted in response to “Commemorating 2 centuries since the death of the inventor of the stethoscope.”

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Anthony Walter, MD. Re: Commemorating 2 centuries since the death of the inventor of the stethoscope (1). BCMJ, Vol. 68, No. 5, June, 2026, Page(s) 159 - Letters.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply