![A thin piece of wood carved into a tube, which slightly flares on one end. The other end is attached to a flat round wood piece.](https://info.hsls.pitt.edu/updatereport/files/2024/07/Fergusson-stethoscope-150x150.jpg)
Listening to the sounds of the body is an old diagnostic technique, reported as early as the 16th century BC in an ancient Egyptian work known as the Ebers Papyrus. For centuries though, the only way to assess the sounds of the human body was to use an unaided ear on the patient’s chest. Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec introduced the mediated auscultation by inventing a stethoscope, a device to aid a physician in listening to the chest sound.
The invention, born in 1816 out of embarrassment when the young doctor, reluctant to use a direct auscultation method on an obese woman, rolled a piece of paper into a tube in the moment of need, and carved the tool from wood shortly after. The sound not only travelled through the improvised tool but it also was easily and clearly audible. Thus, Laennec started to use the new device from that moment on.