Stethoscope Comparison

969 Words2 Pages

When you hear of a great invention that changed the world today you may wonder who the genius that created it is. Well one invention that drew my attention was the Stethoscope. The Stethoscope was invented in 1816 by a French man named Rene Laennec.
Laennec came up the idea while examining an overweight female patient. Laennec felt that using his ear to examine the patient was not only inappropriate but that it would be less accurate. Laennec was embarrassed to place his ear to her chest, which was the method of auscultation used by physicians at the time. Laennec remembered that sound travels through solids, so he rolled up twenty four sheets of paper, placed one end to his ear and the other end to the woman’s chest. He was delighted to discover …show more content…

If you go to a doctor’s office or hospital you will always see nurses and doctors suited with a Stethoscope. These devices make it easier for doctors to hear what is happening with our hearts, lungs, and chests. Some of the things doctors are looking for are irregular heartbeats, wheezing in the chest, and congestion in the lungs. Today’s version of the Stethoscope still resembles the old model but is an electronic version and no longer acoustic. You may be asking yourself what the difference is; well there are many different versions of Stethoscopes today and they vary in design and material. The devices are made with a Y-shaped rubber tube that allows sounds to enter the device at one end and travel up the tubes and through the ear pieces. Other Stethoscopes have a two sided sound detecting device that listeners can reverse, depending on whether or not they need to hear high or low frequencies. Stethoscopes are also used in conjunction with a device to measure blood pressure. Stethoscopes can be used by a variety of experts to examine an assortment of things in our bodies. Although there are many different versions of the Stethoscope they all started with the original invention by

Open Document