Stethoscope

A stethoscope is a medical device used for auscultation, listening to the internal sounds of the body, typically with a small disc-shaped resonator placed against the skin connected by tubing to one or two earpieces. The French physician Rene Laennec invented the original monaural version in 1816 at the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris, after finding it uncomfortable to place his ear directly against a patient's chest; he discovered that a rolled paper tube placed between his ear and the patient's chest could amplify heart sounds without direct contact. The Irish physician Arthur Leared developed the binaural version in 1851, and Laennec's technique of mediate auscultation, listening through an intermediate instrument, transformed diagnostic medicine.