Today, I’m thankful for those who teach us to look beyond the ordinary and invent something extraordinary.
How the world can change if we just look at it through a child’s eye?
Let me explain.
Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec was like any other child born in France in 1781. He was young, happy, and without a care in the world. However, when he was only 5 years of age, his mother passed away from tuberculosis. Orphaned for the most part, Rene moved in with his uncle. As he became older, he suffered from many childhood maladies, including asthma and recurrent fevers, but he still found some pleasure in playing the flute and writing poetry. Eventually, under the tutelage of his uncle, who was the renowned dean of faculty of medicine at Nantes University, he garnered an interest in medicine and successfully completed his medical studies. However, he never abandoned his love of music, so he spent his spare time playing the flute. Dr. Laennec had always been fascinated by the transmission of sound through objects, and so he found himself in the evenings drawn into his woodshop developing new musical instruments. One fall morning in 1816, the good doctor was taking a simple stroll through the courtyard at the Le Louvre Palace. On this particular cool morning, the 35-year-old physician was hoping to find some inspiration prior to a long day caring for patients in his Parisian office. As he strolled through the beautiful gardens with his flute in hand, he happened upon two children playing with a long piece of wood and a pin. He stopped for a moment to notice that one of the children was scratching the pin on one end of the piece of wood, while the other youth had his ear fixed to the other end, listening to the amplified sound emanating from the other side. The sheer delight of the young child made Dr. Laennec wonder whether a similar technique could be used to examine lung and heart sounds emanating from the human body.
A few months later in November of that same year, on a day no different than today, he was called to see a young, fatigued woman with symptoms consistent with heart disease. Recognizing the young patient’s age, gender, and rather large body habitus, he felt a bit embarrassed to perform the then-honored technique of ‘immediate auscultation’ – a fancy description of simply placing one’s ear up to the chest, directly beneath a person’s armpit, to hear the sounds of the heart. Rather than placing his ear up to her chest, he recalled the incident in the park with the two children. So, he grabbed a sheet of paper, rolled it up into a tube, and placed one end to her chest. When he placed his ear to the other end, he was thrilled to discover that he could hear the beating of her heart with such clarity and fullness than he ever did using the tactile technique of immediate auscultation.
So, he went back to his woodshop and devised a prototype of a device using paper cones. However, the sturdiness of the implement left much to be desired. Over the next 3 years, he experimented with several materials before finally settling on where it all started that day in the Louvre gardens – long, thin wooden cylinders with a wider opening on the side intended to be placed to the chest. The device was 3.5-cm in diameter and 25-cm in length, and it came in several parts that could be easily screwed together. This medical implement was also equipped with a conical, portable plug that could be fitted on the wide-mouthed end to help amplify the sound emanating from the chest. In a sentinel paper published in April 1819, entitled Auscultation Mediate ou Traite du Diagnostic des Maladies des Poumons et du Coeur, Dr. Laennec would describe his medical invention to the world.
Viola!
The first medical instrument which he called a ‘stethoscope’ – from the two Greek words for ‘chest’ and ‘to observe’ – was discovered on that day. Sadly, Dr. Laennec would pass away a few years later from tuberculosis, but his invention would live on. Others would modify the stethoscope over time, eventually settling on the long flexible tubing with an attached bell and rigid diaphragm that modern-day physicians readily use.
Dr. Laennec may be regarded as one of the first physician inventors, but today, I thought I’d pay tribute to another physician who gave us another innovation that has changed the face of human entertainment. Born in Almonte, Canada, to Scottish immigrants, James Naismith was also orphaned early in his life. As a young boy, he went to live with his uncle and aunt on their farm. When he was not performing his daily duties caring for the domesticated animals, he found pleasure in playing games with the other children in Almonte. At that time, they played a popular medieval game called ‘Duck on a Rock.’ In this game, one person tries to guard a large stone perched on a platform, while others throw smaller stones at that rock in an effort to knock it from the perch. In due time, James realized the best way to hit the rock down was to throw a soft lobbying shot with a wide arc, rather than a direct, straight throw. His love of sports led him to pursue a degree in physical education at the Presbyterian College of Montreal. After a short stint as the first ever Director of Athletics at McGill University, James immigrated to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he became a physical education teacher at the YMCA Training School in the fall term of 1891.
There, he encountered a perplexing problem. His class of 18 rowdy boys needed some entertainment to keep them occupied indoors during the long, brutal New England winters. At that point, in late November, the head of the department charged James with the task of developing an indoor activity that would provide a non-rough, ‘athletic distraction’ for the boys. He mandated that James create a game that did not take up much space, but one that still gave the boys the ability to stay in shape for the spring track season. After two weeks, James came up with a game involving a soft soccer ball and two peach baskets. He decided to string up the two baskets about 10 feet above the hall’s hardwood floor, one on each side of the gymnasium. The game, which he termed ‘basket ball’ had 13 simple rules, which he pinned outside of the gym on December 21, 1891. When the kids arrived that day, they also stared at the rules as James read them aloud. Basically, the goal was to put the ball in the other opponents’ basket. However, to limit contact, a player holding the ball could not run with it. In other words, the only way to effectively move the ball down the court was to pass it to one of your other 8 teammates. After one team scored, a jump ball was held at center court, and the entire process would start all over. After two 15-minute halves, the winner with the most baskets – each worth 1 point each – was proclaimed the winner. In case you’re interested, the final score of the first game of ‘basket ball’ was 9-3.
Well, about 7 years later, James went on to become a physician after securing his medical degree from the University of Colorado. By this time, his 7-year-old game of ‘basket ball’ was already garnering national attention. So, that same year, he was hired to become the first ‘basket ball’ coach and eventually the Head of the Athletic Department at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. As the popularity for the game grew, the rules of the game morphed. Dribbling with the ball was permitted. The ball was changed to a slightly more firm ball with a better grip. Each basket counted as 2 points, while foul shots equated to 1 point each.
Well, it turns out Naismith was not much of a coach, eventually ending his basketball career with a record of 55-60. However, one of his pupils, Forrest ‘Phogg’ Allen, mastered the game and helped build a legacy in Lawrence, where other renowned coaches would rule the game – individuals like Adolph Rupp, Dean Smith, Larry Brown, Roy Williams, and so on. In fact, to this day, James Naismith is the only coach in the history of University of Kansas basketball with a losing record. Sadly, Dr. Naismith died on this day (Nov 28) in 1939, but not before he witnessed the first official basketball event in the Summer Olympics in 1936 and the first NCAA Tournament in 1939.
Today, the rulebook for the sport of basketball is 66 pages long, a far cry from the 13 simple rules stapled outside of that YMCA gymnasium in 1891. Exactly a decade ago, several University of Kansas alumni paid more than $4 million dollars to secure the first draft of Naismith’s rules for ‘basket ball.’ The rules now reside in the Debruce Center on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence, safely preserved in glass for all the star-gazed fans of this amazing game to see.
Doctors may indeed make for horrible patients, but they do make for amazing inventors. It leaves me wondering, is there something from my childhood past that I can advance into the next great medical technology or, better yet, the next great American sport?
Commentaires