Wooden chest piece with ivory earpiece. The stethoscope, first devised in 1816 by the French physician Rene Laennec (1781-1826), was constructed from a simple hollow tube. Stethoscopes were designed to help the physician diagnose diseases of the lungs, heart and vascular systems by listening to the internal rhythms and sounds of the human body. The familiar binaural (two-ear) stethoscope was developed in the 1850s, although the monaural stethoscope remained popular well into the twentieth century.