Alex of Neatorama passes on word that…
The stethoscope was invented by a doctor too embarrassed to place his ear on a woman’s ample bosom.
Before the invention of the stethoscope, a physician would listen to a patient’s heart by placing his ear over the chest.
It sounds funny but there are actually a number of medical traditions wherein physicians avoided direct physical examination of patients… either patients of the opposite sex or all patients, period.
Such reticence had largely gone by the wayside by 1816, when the devoutly Catholic René Laennec invented his stethoscope. But when he was called to examine a young woman for heart disease he couldn’t bring himself to listen to her chest directly and instead used a rolled-up tube of paper. That worked well enough that he had one made out of wood.
One wonders if any other genuine medical advances arose directly from the 19th Century’s, well, passionate commitment to masculine sexual abstinence. (The other big contributions would be the health-food and exercise movements later in the 19th Centuries but I’d argue those were indirect advances.)
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Note: As a 19th-Century surgeon Laennec would have avoided spending up to two-thirds of his time, and receiving up to two-thirds of his income vigorously stimulating his female patient’s vulvas in order to bring about their “hysterical paroxysms.” A very common, profitable, but also undesirable-to-physicians medical treatment Rachel P. Maines’ called “the job nobody wanted.”
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Incidentally, when he wasn’t busy shying away from women’s bodices Laennec was a pretty productive, advancing understanding of peritonitis, metastasis of cancer, and naming as well as studying cirrhosis of the liver.
I, as a female patient, am
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 2010-02-13 07:55.I, as a female patient, am just glad that I can decide, who I want and don’t want to touch my breasts, instead of having to let some doctors do that every time they have to listen to my heartbeat (we all go to gynecologists too, but believe me, most of us feels at least a bit uncomfortable in the first few times). Where’s the problem with that? And maybe the patient was the one who wanted to avoid the touching in the first place.
i guess, that you respect your urologist, but would gladly switch to a touch-free method of the same exams, if that was possible, without calling any of you a prude.
[If I’ve given the wrong impression about who I think was prudish I apologize. Patient autonomy, regardless of the type of care, is really, really important. And if a patient doesn’t want to be touched then caregivers need to respect it. What happened in this case, though, was a doctor rejecting contact with the patient when that was considered the standard of care. It turned out all for the best in that case, but as Rachel Maines, as well as Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English (to name just three) and many other historians of science, medicine, and gender have pointed out, doctor’s treatment of women in the 19th and 20th century has often been consistent with Laennec’s model of resentment and avoidance of women. As for urologists, I’m not yet old enough to have prostate problems but because colon cancer runs in my family I have had close encounters with proctologists. Thanks in large part to what I’ve had to think about as a sex blogger, and gender blogger, I’ve developed a whole new relationship with both doctors and their relationship with my “naughty” parts. Thanks! —fl]
hi, i was trying to speak
Submitted by same anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 2010-02-13 15:49.hi, i was trying to speak about that colonoscopy experience, as you h ave described it in the blog, but i’m just not too good at doctors’ names. anyway, the post was interesting. thanks :)
Actually the stethoscope has
Submitted by Red (not verified) on Sun, 2010-02-14 06:40. Actually the stethoscope has pretty large medical benefits, beyond patient autonomy let alone prudery. For one thing an experienced physician, nurse, or medic CAN hear better and catch more nuances of what not just the heart, but the long and even the digestive track is doing. In fact, even professionals with a mild to moderate hearing loss (like my brother who is a medic) are not at all compromised in what they can detect, which would not be the case with your ear to someone’s chest. Then you have situations where the patient is bleeding, seriously injured, hard to control because they are drunk, high or certain mental states, hooked up to several tubes, requires a spinal board, or when infectious disease is an object. Also I’ve seen and used stethoscopes to deal with non-medical things such as diagnosing and locating a roach, rat, fire ant, or termite problem in a structure, trying to detect certain problems with water pipes or other types of machines and structural problems. Not to mention the the fact that vetrinarians wouldn’t put their ears to a cat, dog, bird, cow, walrus or elephant.Not to mention something as
Submitted by Holly Pervocracy (not verified) on Sun, 2010-02-14 09:37.Not to mention something as simple as taking a BP—can you get that by putting your ear on someone’s arm? (I’ve never tried. But I’m guessing that would be uncomfortable as well as ineffective.
I have to say, though, that it’s a little strange to describe a reluctance to put your face on a stranger’s chest as prudery, because really, it’s not supposed to be sexual, and any mechanism that makes it less like a sexual situation without harming the quality of care is probably a good thing for patient dignity and appropriate boundaries.
Hospital gowns are “prudish” too, it would be actually be easier from a practical standpoint if patients sat around hospitals and clinics butt-naked, but those dang Victorian mores, I tell ya.
Having had my tonsils out a
Submitted by Red (not verified) on Mon, 2010-02-15 20:05. Having had my tonsils out a few months ago, I found that hospital gowns aren’t just prudery. Nowadays, they can actually connect them to a tube and have them heated. And the socks were supposedly to keep you from slipping on the floor.