ABSTRACT
The French Revolution of 1789 that overthrew the monarchy produced a medical revolution that swept away the "systems" that had ruled medicine during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1791, Fourcroy, a chemist and non-practicing physician who was interested in the application of chemistry to medicine and in the changes that accompany the pathologic state—devised what probably was the first plan for establishing clinical laboratories in hospitals. Medical leadership passed to Germany where "hospital medicine," having displaced the "library" and "bedside medicine" of its predecessors, was succeeded by the new "laboratory medicine" which featured chemistry, microscopy and animal experimentation. The stethoscope, invented by Rene-Theophile-Hyacinthe Laennec was the first major diagnostic tool available to clinical medicine. With the developing concepts of specific diseases and specific causes, specific therapy came into play and diagnosis attained a new therapeutic importance. Gabriel Andral laboratory studies on blood established clinical hematology as a separate discipline in internal medicine.
