ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how French physician René Theophile-Hyacinthe Laënnec—the stethoscope's creator—popularized auscultating (or listening to) heart, lungs, and other organs with a textbook (de l'auscultation médiate or of mediated auscultation) for gathering and disseminating medico-sonic knowledge—an historical moment memorializing medico-sonic interpretations of the body mediated by rhetoric. Four questions guide the chapter and ask, (1) How does Laënnec use rhetoric in de l'auscultation mediate to create medico-sonic knowledge about the body? (2) How does his use of rhetoric persist today? (3) What modern health and healing technologies use sound diagnostically, prognostically, and therapeutically? (4) How do sounds from healthcare technologies discipline bodies? Laënnec's work was assisted by rhetorical devices—metaphor and simile—and remains foundational for medical and nursing clinical education today. This chapter identifies instances when Laënnec uses rhetorical devices in his foundational medical education text before exploring rhetoric and sound now in health in healing using diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic healthcare technologies. Sound is used diagnostically (functional magnetic resonance imaging, stethoscopes) to determine disease, conditions, and ailments; prognostically to make predictions about disease (coughs, artificial intelligence); and therapeutically (ventilators, Tibetan singing bowls) to treat particular diagnostic determinations, such as respiratory distress or even just stress.
