36. Rene Laennec equipped doctors with the item most associated with them
Rene Laennec changed the world while working as a physician in early 19th century France. Dissatisfied with the inability to properly determine the internal conditions of patients who were overweight, Laennec devised a method of hearing internal sounds without applying the physician’s ear to the chest or back of the patient. He first used paper rolled into a cone. He then developed a hollow tube with a belled opening on one end. Finally he hit upon two tubes, one for each ear, connected to a bell-shaped device which was placed on the patient. He named his device the stethoscope, one of the earliest non-invasive medical devices developed as a diagnostic tool.