Traité de l'auscultation médiate ou traité diagnostic des maladies des poumons et du coeur. 2 vols.

Second edition, hugely revised, expanded, and improved. The pagination of the first edition (1819) was 456 pp. in vol. 1 and 472 pp. in vol. 2. The second edition was expanded to 728pp. in vol. 1 and 790 pp. in vol. 2.

Laennec’s invention of the stethoscope, announced in the first edition of De l’Auscultation médiate (No. 2673) provided the first adequate method for diagnosing diseases of the thorax, and represented the greatest advance in physical diagnosis between Auenbrugger’s percussion and Röntgen’s discovery of x-rays. The second edition, 1826, is even more important, since it gives not only the various physical signs elicited in the chest, but adds the pathological anatomy, diagnosis, and treatment of each disease encountered.

“In the first edition [of De l’Auscultation médiate] (1819), Laennec pursues the analytic method, giving the different signs elicited by percussion and auscultation, with the corresponding anatomic lesions . . . In the second edition (1826), the process is turned about and the method is synthetic, each disease being described in detail in respect of diagnosis, pathology, and (most intelligent) treatment, so that this edition is, in effect, the most important treatise on diseases of the thoracic organs ever written” (Garrison, History of Medicine, p. 412; emphasis ours). Some copies of the second edition were sold with colored plates at a higher price.