Ferguson Stethoscope

Dr. John Creey Ferguson was an Irish physician educated at Trinity College, Dublin University and The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. His close friend in Dublin was Dr. William Stokes, who was an expert on auscultation and wrote a text on stethoscope while just a medical student! Dr. Ferguson spent one year in Paris studying with Laennec and Kergaradec to learn the use of the stethoscope, most especially for fetal auscultation. He was the first physician in the Bristh Isles to hear a human fetal heart beat with the Laennec stethoscope in November of 1827. In 1829, Dr. Ferguson published his classic treatise on "Auscultation the only unequivical evidence of preganancy" in the Dublin Medical Transactions (the only issue of this journal ever published). Dr. Ferguson was noted for his advocacy of using the stethoscope for fetal auscultation. He was the King's Professor of Physic at Dublin University and became the first Professor of Medicine at the new Queens College. In 1856, while serving as Physician to the Belfast General Hospital, he published a lecture on "Consumption: What it is and what it is not."