Laennec, Rene Theophile Hyacinthe

Laennec, Rene Theophile Hyacinthe
Laennec, the son of an unsuccessful lawyer, was brought up, after his mother’s death, mainly by his uncle G.F Laennec, professor of medicine at the University of Nantes.

He was a pupil of Jean Corvisart at the Charite in Paris, qualifying as a doctor in 1804.

He worked at a number of hospitals before becoming in 1814 physician-in-chief at the Hospital Necker, where he remained until 1822.

Then he was appointed professor of medicine at the College de France.

In 1826, he was forced to retire to Brittany where he died of consumption.

In 1819 Laennec published one of the classic texts of modern medicine, De l’auscultation mediate ( on Mediate Auscultation). It advanced the work of Leopold Auenbrugger in describing sounds detected within the body and the various diseases and anatomical defects they were related to.

The work is, however best known for its description of the situation leading to his invention of the stethoscope.
In 1816 he was consulted by a young woman with heart trouble whose age and sex inhibited him from examining her by his usual method, namely placing his ear on her breasts.

Instead, Laennec tightly rolled a sheaf of paper and placed one end over the heart and the other to his ear,

He was surprised and pleased to find that the heartbeat could be heard far more clearly and distinctly than before.

The work became widely known and was translated into English in 1821 and only two years later was published in America, where it was vigorously promoted by Austin Flint.

The stethoscope itself, in improved flexible versions, rapidly became a standard part of the physician’s equipment.
Laennec, Rene Theophile Hyacinthe

The Father of Vitamins: Casimir Funk

The Father of Vitamins: Casimir Funk
Vitamins are s much a part of modern life you may have a hard time believing they are first discovered less than a century ago.

Of course, people have long known that certain food contain something special.

For example, the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates prescribed liver for night-blindness (the inability to see well in dim light).

By the end of the 18th century (1795), British Navy ships carried a mandatory supply of limes or lime juices to prevent scurvy among the men, thus earning the Brits once and forever nickname limeys.

Later on, the Japanese Navy gave its sailors whole grain barley to ward off beriberi.

Everyone knew these prescriptions worked, but nobody knew why – until 1912, when Casimir Funk (1884 – 1967), a Polish biochemist working first in England and then in the United States, identified “something” in food that he called vitamins (vita – life; amines – nitrogen compounds).

The following year, Funk and a fellow biochemist, Briton Frederick Hopkins, suggested that some medical conditions such as scurvy and beriberi simply deficiency diseases caused by absence of a specific nutrient in the body.

Adding a food with the missing nutrition to one’s diet would prevent or cure the deficiency disease.
The Father of Vitamins: Casimir Funk

Albert, Wilhelm August Julius

Albert, Wilhelm August Julius
He was born on January 24, 1787 in Hannover Germany. He was German mining official successful applier of wire cable.

After studying law at the University of Gottingen, Albert turned to the mining industry and in 1806 started his career in mining administration in the Harz district, where he became Chief Inspector of mines thirty years later.

His influence on the organization of the mining industry was considerable and he contributed valuable ideas for the development of mining technology.

For example, he initiated experiments with Reichenbach’s water column in Harz when it had been working successfully in the transportation of brine in Bavaria, and he encouraged Dorell to work on his miner’s elevator.

The increasing depth of shafts in the Harz district brought problems with hoisting as the ropes became too heavy and tended to break.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century iron link chains replaced the hempen ropes which which were expensive and wore out too quickly, especially in the wet conditions on the shafts.

After he had experimented for six years using counterbalancing iron link chains, which broke too easily, in 1834 he conceived the idea of producing stranded cables from iron wires.

Their breaking strength and flexibility depended greatly on the softness of the iron and the way of laying the strands.

Albert produced the cable by attaching the wires to strings which he turned evenly; this method became known as ‘Albert lay’.

He was not the first to conceive the idea of metal cables: there exist evidence for such cables as far back as Pompeii; Leonardo da Vinci made sketches of cables made from brass wires and in 1780 the French engineer Reignier applied iron cables for lightning conductors.

The idea also developed in various other mining areas, but Albert cables were the first to gain rapidly direct common usage worldwide.
Albert, Wilhelm August Julius