Bakelite Monaural Stethoscope Chestpiece

Description: Beginning in 1700 B.C., found in the earliest known medical manuscripts from ancient Egypt, it was typical for physicians to place their ear directly on patients to observe the internal sounds of the heart and lungs, also known as immediate auscultation. In 1816, however, a French physician named René Laennec found it a bit awkward placing his ear on female patients’ chests. As a remedy, Dr. Laennec used a rolled up piece of paper to instead listen “from a distance” and, to his surprise, found that the sounds of the heart and lungs had been amplified. To further improve his invention, Dr. Laennec later developed a more durable instrument of similar, simple design out of wood, naming it the stethoscope – directly translated from Greek to mean: “I look into the chest.” For nearly 40 years, these monaural stethoscopes were predominantly used by physicians for mediate auscultation until the first binaural model was constructed in 1851. Even still, however, physicians were skeptical about the binaural stethoscopes with the fear that they would hear imbalances due to using two ears instead of one. For this reason, the monaural model continued to be the main stethoscope used until they slowly fell out of use in the early 1930s when binaural stethoscopes were made out of flexible rubber and stainless steel. These new materials prompted more effective transmission of sound through the tubes resulting in less skepticism of its use from physicians. Stethoscopes manufactured in the 1930s are fairly similar to ones used in modern medicine and the device’s progression of design over time can be found in our collection.

This device consists of a chestpiece of a monaural stethoscope from the early 20th century made from Bakelite of English origin.

Origin: Circa Early 20th Century; England