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Most people will have had a cold stethoscope pressed to their chest at some
time. Few could name its inventor. Jacalyn Duffin’s biography of René
Laennec, who devised this possibly most important of medical instruments, shows
that he was far more than a pioneer of medicine, taking an active part in what
Duffin calls the dramatic changes of the Napoleonic period. Doctors will find
more in To See with a Better Eye than general readers, though. Published by
Princeton University Press, £35, ISBN 0691937086.