The stethoscope is the most recognisable of all medical equipment, identifiable by even the smallest children as being associated with doctors. Its inventor, René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec, would have turned 235 yesterday and has been honoured with a Google Doodle.Laënnec was born in 1781 in France and studied medicine under his physician uncle in Nantes until he was called to serve as a medical cadet in the French Revolution.He was regarded as an excellent student after he resumed his studies in Paris in 1801, and began working in the city's Necker Hospital with the restoration of the monarchy in 1815.In 1816, shyness led Laënnec to invent the stethoscope. He was examining a young woman complaining of heart problems. At that time, doctors generally listened to patients' heartbeats by resting an ear against the patient's chest, but the conservative Laënnec thought this improper under the circumstances, especially as his patient was overweight.He rolled a piece of paper into a tube, pressed it to her chest - and was able to hear her heart beating.Inspired by his paper experiment, he built several hollow wooden prototypes attached to a single microphone at one end and an earpiece at the other, and named it the stethoscope.The term is derived from the Greek words stethos for "chest", and scopos for "examination".The instrument was swiftly adopted across France and wider Europe, before spreading to the US. Laënnec died of tuberculosis aged only 45 in 1826, but was aware of the importance of his discovery, calling it "the greatest legacy of my life."..