The stethoscope
It was through watching children play with a needle on a wooden plank – the sound resonating from one side of the beam to the other – that the French doctor René Laennec discovered a new method for listening to the heartbeats of corpulent women (after finding it quite difficult to use the traditional technique of putting an ear to their chest)! So it was that in February 1816, the first ever stethoscope was used, made from the pages of Laennec’s observation book rolled into a tube. The device worked well, so he went on to make several wooden models.
