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Its name derives from the ancient Greek: stethos = chest and
skope = observation.
It's useful in the hearing the sounds from inside our body, above all, to hear the chest checking the heartbeat and the breathing.

It was invented in 1816 in France by Rene-Theophyle-Hyacinte Laennec. It's told that the idea came to him using a rolled notebook to hear the heartbeats putting his ears over it.

Then the stethoscope was improved using a wood cylinder 1 feet high with a hole of 2 mm of diameter.

In 1851, Arthur Leared invented the two-ears stethoscope and, in 1852, George Camman modified its form for the industrial production, until making it like we know it today.

Before its invention, doctors had to put their ears on the patient's chest, hoping to hear something.
Today, instead, the stethoscope is considered a symbol of the medical profession.

The most used today is still the classic ACOUSTIC model, that simply transmits the sounds from the chest of the patient through a plastic or gum tube containing air to both ears of the doctor, but its problem is the low volume of the sounds transmitted, without any amplification, making difficult to make a precise diagnose.

To resolve these problems, the most modern versions are ELECTRONIC, that can detect also the weakest sounds, amplifying them.
Surely, they are the future for this instrument, totally replacing the acoustic models within few years.
The simplest have a microphone to be put on the patient's chest, but they suffer the external sounds interferences, so that the last models have some filters to eliminate this problem.

Some examples are the Littmann 3000, produced by 3M and the Thinkblas ds 32a.

Learn more about this author, Aldo Bonincontro.
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