A stethoscope is a device used by physicians to listen to the sounds inside the body. Generally, these sounds originate from the heart, lungs, abdomen and the blood vessels. Very often valuable information about the disorders in certain parts of the body can be obtained through observing the change in sounds. For instance, a change in the sounds made by the rushing of blood through the heart valves or by the closing of valves may give important clues to different heart diseases. Similarly, an abnormality in the sounds made by air in the windpipe and airways in the lungs may indicate certain lung disorders.
Stethoscope was invented by a French doctor, Rene T.H. Laennec, in 1815. It was a one-foot-long hollow wooden cylinder. He put one end of the cylinder on to his patient’s chest and listened to the sounds produced by the heart and the chest through the other end. As he compared such sounds from different patients, he could reach certain conclusions. In 1819, he published these conclusions in the form of a book entitled, De L’ Auscultation Mediate, and soon stethoscope came into general use.
Since those days, many modifications have been made in its design. A modern stethoscope basically consists of a contact piece called the chest piece. This can be a flat chest piece for high-pitched sounds or a bell-shaped open-ended chest piece for low-pitched sounds. It conducts sounds through two flexible rubber or plastic tubes to a pair of ear pieces which fit into the physician’s ears and excludes other sounds. The chest piece is put in contact with the different parts of the chest and the back. Now, through these sounds the physician gets valuable clues regarding the different diseases the patient might be suffering from. The stethoscope is still the simplest and the most useful means available to doctors to examine the lungs and heart.