"No other symbol so strongly identifies the doctor than a stethoscope."
Ariel Rogun, MD, PhD
Although physician Rene Laennec (1781-1826) is credited with inventing the stethoscope, doctors in ancient Greece had practiced the art of auscultation, or listening. The Frenchman's flash of inspiration came in 1816 when he was confronted by a plump, young female patient with a heart condition. Overcome by embarrassment at the thought of having to press his ear to her ample bosom, Laennec recalled having seen children tapping a log while listening at the far end. This inspired him to roll up a sheath of papers into a cylinder and apply it to her chest, with the result that he could clearly hear her heartbeat.
From this idea Laennec developed the first true stethoscope, which consisted of a hollow wooden tube around 9 inches (22 cm) long and 1 inch (2.5 cm) in diameter, known as a "Monaural" stethoscope due to having only one earpiece. Laennec spent the next three years perfecting his design. In 1819 he published a groundbreaking book in which he showed that by giving access to the internal sounds of breathing and blood flow, stethoscopes allowed pathology to be performed for the first time on living things.
In 1829 Nicholas Comins, a Scottish doctor, devised the first flexible stethoscope, and in 1852 New York physician George P. Cammann added two earpieces for binaural sounds to Laennec's design. In 1878 a microphone was added to amplify sounds.
