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Have you ever had a physical exam or been to the doctors? Well if not let me help you out. The thing that is hanging around his/her neck is a stethoscope. This person that is using it is either your nurse or doctor in most cases.

Stethoscopes are a very valuable and usefool too in the medical world. Simple little instrument but a handy one none the less.

The first stethoscope looked more like a microphone and it consisted of a wooden tube. This first stethoscope could only be used to hear from one ear. The inventor was from France. He invented it in 1816 his name is Rene-Theophile-hyacinthe Laennec.

Like most anything else the stethoscope just kept getting reinvented which meant it could only get better. Next in 1851 Arthur Leared invented a stethoscope that you could hear noises in both ears. Well in 1852 just a year after that invention a man by the name of George Cammann made or I should say perfected a stethoscope that was made for commercial production and is now the standard for the stethoscope.
However once again as time passed this invention kept getting better but not until 1940 when Rappaport and sprague. These two designed a great stethoscope by which today all standards of the stethoscope are measured by. Later the Rappaport Sprague was redone by Hewlett packard then later by Philips. There are still cardiologis who will tell you that they consider this to be the finest acoustic stethoscope.

In the 1960's we got a lighter stethoscope which was invented by a Harvard Professor Dr. Littman. As you all may know by now, the stethoscope is used for auscultation(listening) to the internal sounds of the human body, animals or the sounds of engine for an auto mechanic. The sounds that the doctor would be most interested in hearing would be ofcourse your heart, breathing sounds, intestines, blood flow through the arteries, and veins.

There are a few types of stethoscope there are acoustic, and electronic scopes.

Learn more about this author, Jadey Bayless.
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