Fiona Robertson Scotland, United Kingdom   Laennec, at the Hospital Necker examining a consumptive patient by auscultation Painting by Théobald Chartran (1849–1907)     One of the most iconic tools of the medical profession is the stethoscope. Here we see René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec, a French physician, using his prototype monoaural stethoscope. It was a wooden cylinder…