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The stethoscope

The stethoscope

📖 In short

A stethoscope is an instrument a doctor puts in their ears to hear sounds inside your body, like your heartbeat, the air in your lungs and your tummy rumbling. From these sounds the doctor can tell whether your organs are working well.

🤩 Did you know?

  • The French doctor René Laennec made the first stethoscope from a wooden tube in 1816.
  • Listening to the body's sounds is called “auscultation”.
  • Today there are electronic stethoscopes that record sounds.
  • Vets use stethoscopes to examine animals too.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Parts of the stethoscope

A stethoscope has a round piece the doctor puts on your chest, with a thin membrane that picks up sounds, and the sounds then travel through rubber tubes to the doctor's ears.

🔍 What does the doctor hear?

The doctor hears the heart going “lub-dub” and can tell if it's regular, hears air going in and out of the lungs, and asks you to take a deep breath so the sounds are clearer.

💡 How it was invented

Before the stethoscope, doctors put their ear right on the patient's chest. Then a French doctor rolled a sheet of paper into a tube and put it on a patient's chest, heard the heart clearly, and made the first stethoscope out of wood.

🎯 Try it yourself

You can make a simple stethoscope from a cardboard tube, or a funnel and a hose, and gently listen to a friend's heartbeat.

📸 More pictures

The stethoscope

🧩 Test yourself

1 What does the doctor hear with a stethoscope?

2 What was the first stethoscope made of?

3 Which picture shows “The stethoscope”?

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📷 Picture sources: Wikimedia Commons