This was the stethoscope, the invention of R. T. H. Laennec (1781–1826), one of the most complex and gifted of the French clinicians.

French hospital medicine came to be based on three pillars, none entirely new, but which together constituted a new way of looking at disease. The three pillars were physical diagnosis, pathologico-clinical correlation, and the use of large numbers of cases to elucidate diagnostic categories and to evaluate therapy