Antique Stethoscope reproductions
Many of you have seen these but I have not posted them on WC. I thought some of you might find them interesting. The article I wrote about these reproductions just came out in Issue 383 of Woodturning magazine in England.
I was watching an episode of Mysteries at the Museum on TV that was about a wooden tube used by French physician René Laennec that was the first stethoscope. In the early 1800’s, and prior to the development of the stethoscope, physicians would often perform physical examinations using techniques such as percussion and immediate auscultation. In immediate auscultation, physicians placed their ear directly on the patient to hear internal sounds.
This technique suffered from several drawbacks, the foremost being that it required physical contact between the physician and the patient and proper placement of the ear. In addition, the sounds observed by the physician were not amplified in any way, creating the possibility of missing key sounds that might indicate potential illness.
During an examination of a young woman, Laennec was reluctant to perform immediate auscultation on the young female patient. He decided to use a rolled sheet of paper to create an aural tube to facilitate auscultation. He was excited to discover that heart sounds were clearly audible, and this discovery later lead to the development of the first device specifically for this purpose.
Laennec’s design was inspired after watching school children playing with long, hollow reeds in the days leading up to his innovation. The children held their ear to one end of the stick while the opposite end was scratched with a pin, the stick transmitted and amplified the scratch. He built his first instrument as a hollow wooden cylinder. Similar to a hearing aid known as an ear trumpet, it allowed the physician to more comfortably perform auscultation.
René Laennec wrote a medical paper De l'Auscultation Médiate, published in August 1819 explaining the use of the stethoscope and provided diagrams of the model he built.
The word stethoscope is derived from the two Greek words, stethos (chest) and scopos (examination). Apart from listening to the heart and chest sounds, it is also used to hear bowel sounds and blood flow noises in arteries and veins. Laennec coined the phrase mediate auscultation (indirect listening), as opposed to the popular practice at the time of directly placing the ear on the body (immediate auscultation).
It wasn’t until 1851 when the stethoscope had its next major improvement, which was to make the device bi-aural. Invented by Irish physician Arthur Leared, it was refined in 1852 by George Cammann for commercialization and is nearly the same instrument as the one in use today.
I continued to research these devices known as monaural stethoscopes and was intrigued by the designs that were available during the years of its use. Most were variants of Laennec’s original design but some were quite stylish. It was obvious that stethoscopes were turned instruments.
I decided to try and turn some reproductions of these antique devices that changed medical diagnostics forever. Originally wooden stethoscopes were made from various types of fruitwood. I turned mine from whatever I could find in the shop. Once I started I couldn’t stop turning different models.
After I finished a few my wife and I played doctor and were amazed at how well the gurgles, lub dubs and whooshes emanating from the various areas of the body could be heard with my stethoscopes. It was interesting that the sound quality varied from one shape to another. Playing doctor was as much fun today as it used to be.
The broad flat end or ear plate is for the ear while the trumpet or horn-shaped end is on the patient. These reproductions range in size from 3 ½” to a little over 11” long and all are around 2” in diameter.
