Excerpt from Retrospect of Practical Medicine and Surgery, Vol. 7
The acoustic examination of disease having been so profoundly as well as generally studied, it is not surprising that the instruments used in it should have wanted modifications to make them exhibit better the phenomena which increased experience and skill have discovered. To make these improvements some knowledge of acoustic science is necessary; and it might seem to be the province more of the natural philosopher, than of the physician to suggest them.
But it must be borne in mind, that a good understanding of the ends in view, as well as of the instrument, is required. To suggest what a stethoscope ought to be, a knowledge of acoustics is not more necessary than an acquaintance with disease, and experience in its investigation. A want of these latter qualifications, in my opinion, renders some recent suggestions from the Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh, of little value to practical men; and an imperfect acquaintance with the whole of the purposes and principles of the stethoscope seems to me apparent in other late proposals for the improvement of the stethoscope.
Twenty years' attention to the principles and practice of auscultation may perhaps warrant me in offering to the section a few remarks on the acoustic principles of means used in auscultation, and on the best mode of applying them with efficacy and convenience.
Lacnnee, the inventer of the stethoscope, had no accurate views of the principles of its construction. He declared that the instruments which he found the best, were not made according to the commonly received laws of physics. Yet experience taught him that the solid cylinder does not convey breath sounds or voice sounds so well as a cylinder perforated and hollowed at its pectoral end.
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