Stethoscope
acoustic medical device for auscultation
The stethoscope (from Ancient Greek στῆθος (stêthos) 'breast' and σκοπέω (skopéō) 'to look') is a medical device for auscultation, or listening to internal sounds of an animal or human body. It typically has a small disc-shaped resonator that is placed against the naked skin, with either one or two tubes connected to two earpieces. A stethoscope can be used to listen to the sounds made by the heart, lungs or intestines, as well as blood flow in arteries and veins. In combination with a manual sphygmomanometer, it is commonly used when measuring blood pressure. It was invented in 1816 by René Laennec and the binaural version by Arthur Leared in 1851.
A stethoscope that intensifies auscultatory sounds is called a phonendoscope.
History
The stethoscope was invented in France in 1816 by René Laennec at the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris. It consisted of a wooden tube and was monaural. Laennec invented the stethoscope because he was not comfortable placing his ear directly onto a woman's chest in order to listen to her heart. He observed that a rolled piece of paper, placed between the individual's chest and his ear, could amplify heart sounds without requiring physical contact.
“Stethoscope” enters the record as acoustic medical device for auscultation. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Stethoscope, acoustic and medical can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stethoscope” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.