Clinical Need for Mediate Auscultation

In 1816, Laennec was consulted by a young woman laboring under general symptoms of diseased heart, and in whose case percussion and the application of the hand were of little avail on account of the great degree of fatness. This consultation is the documented context in which direct examination proved inadequate; the narrative commonly associated with the invention holds that it prompted the use of a tool intermediate between the body and the physician's ear, which Laennec called mediate auscultation. The supplied passages do not state the consultation's precise location.