The First Ever Stethoscope Was a Simple Wooden Tube

(via Atlas Obscura) At the Necker Hospital in Paris, Dr. René Laennec stood at the bedside of a female patient who complained of heart trouble. To better understand this woman’s ailment, the doctor had limited options. This was 1816, and the standard procedure for auscultation—listening to the respiratory system—involved putting one’s ear against a patient’s chest to hear the heart and lungs. Instead of placing his ear on her chest, he rolled a piece of paper into a tube, and put it between his ear and the woman’s heart.