Get to know the stethoscope

Get to Know the Stethoscope

1816-The Stethoscope

In the year

*A stethoscope is an acoustic medical instrument for listening to the action of someone's heart or the internal sounds of an human or animal body, typically has a small disk-shaped resonator that gets placed against the body, and one/two tubes that connects to two earpieces.

René Laennec had passed 2 kids using a device to signal each other across a long piece of wooden board. One child was holding the board to her ear and the other was scratching the opposite end. Sending the amplified sound down the length of the wood

*The first stethoscope

This discovery took place in Paris, at a hospital called Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital.

The stethoscope was first discovered by a 35 year old doctor by the name of René Laennec. This was observed when the sound of the heart, when a rolled piece of paper was placed between the region of the patient's heart and his ear, was clear and amplified.

The stethoscope enables health care workers to hear the internal sounds of human and animal bodies. The sounds produced by intestines, lungs, heart, and other organs can be indicators for doctors.

*Originally naming the Stethoscope “Le Cylindre” , he soon later changed it to Stethoscope, from the Greek Stethos meaning Chest and skopein meaning to look at or examine.

1851, the stethoscope started to have major changes/improvements by an Irish physician named Arthur Leared and later on got clarified by George Cammann to make it bi-aural.

Arthur Leared

George Cammann

By the 1900's the stethoscope now had decreased concerns and was being commonly used for diagnoses.

Throughout, the stethoscope had many minor advancements, which were to reduce the weight, improve the quality,and filter out external noises through the 20th century.

Discoveries that stethoscope lead to:

The stethoscope lead to many discoveries which would become helpful for doctors. Rene Laennec found that when a person has fluid beneath their lungs, they make a bleating sound, kind of like a goat, he called the sound egophony. He also discovered sounds that tracked with the different stages of tuberculosis.

The beat of the heart told many different things about the body, and soon through the stethoscope, doctors were making other important discoveries that changed the way people thought about disease. Medical language completely changed, as doctors invented new anatomical words for diseases, like Bronchitis, which means the inflammation of the bronchial tubes.It helped the doctors to hear the full spectrum of internal sounds.

Before the stethoscope was invented, for a person to be sick, they had to feel sick but now, it doesn’t matter what the patient thought was wrong and instead mostly mattered what the doctor found. And René Laennec later died in 1826 at the age of 45 and mostly likely of tuberculosis, a disease he and his stethoscope helped us understand.

Discoveries that stethoscope lead to:

Now, every doctor you see will have a stethoscope with them. Stethoscopes are now often a symbol of the medical field and most people associate them with medical professionals, it became a standard tool used in medical practices.

Today's stethoscopes continue to evolve as medical professionals may now choose between acoustic and electronic stethoscopes. While acoustic stethoscopes remain a popular medical device, electronic stethoscopes offer several advantages. These stethoscopes work by converting acoustic sound waves into electrical data. The main advantage of electronic stethoscopes compared to acoustic, is that they can amplify low sounds often not heard by the ear or acoustic stethoscope alone.

Before the stethoscope, the person had to feel sick in order to be sick but after the stethoscope, it didn’t matter what patients thought was wrong with them, and instead it mattered more what the doctor found. René Laennec later died in 1826 at the age of 45 and mostly likely of tuberculosis, a disease he and his stethoscope helped us understand.