THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL INVENTORS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7

western France. Laënnec’s uncle was the dean of medicine
at the University of Nantes. Although the region was in
the midst of counterrevolutionary revolts, the young
Laënnec settled into his academic training and, under his
uncle’s direction, began his medical studies. His first
experience working in a hospital setting was at the Hôtel-
Dieu of Nantes, where he learned to apply surgical
dressings and to care for patients. In 1800 Laënnec went
to Paris and entered the École Pratique, studying anat-
omy and dissection in the laboratory of surgeon and
pathologist Guillaume Dupuytren. Dupuytren was a
bright and ambitious academic who became known for
his many surgical accomplishments and for his work in
alleviating permanent tissue contracture in the palm, a
condition later named Dupuytren contracture. While
Dupuytren undoubtedly influenced Laënnec’s studies,
Laënnec also received instruction from other well-known
French anatomists and physicians, including Gaspard
Laurent Bayle, who studied tuberculosis and cancer;
Marie-François-Xavier Bichat, who helped establish his-
tology, the study of tissues; and Jean-Nicolas Corvisart
des Marets, who used chest percussion to assess heart
function and who served as personal physician to
Napoleon I.
Laënnec became known for his studies of peritonitis,
amenorrhea, the prostate gland, and tubercle lesions. He
graduated in 1804 and continued his research as a faculty
member of the Society of the School of Medicine in Paris.
He wrote several articles on pathological anatomy and
became devoted to Roman Catholicism, which led to his
appointment as personal physician to Joseph Cardinal
Fesch, half brother of Napoleon and French ambassador
to the Vatican in Rome. Laënnec remained Fesch’s phy-
sician until 1814, when the cardinal was exiled after