3 Methods of Sound Diagnostics

In the area of medicine, the faculties of hearing were systematically applied for the first time in 1761 when Joseph Leopold von Auenbrugger developed percussion as a diagnostic method — the physician raps the surface of the patient’s skin with his fingers and based on the natural resonance of the body part deduces the constitution of the organ located below it. In 1819, the French physician René Laënnec developed the method of auscultation, initially using a rolled-up sheet of paper and later wooden instruments, which he referred to as a stethoscope.^[7] Joseph Skoda continued Laënnec’s work on differentiating between the various qualities of noises and developed an elementary system of sound phenomena that is still valid today.^[8]

Both of these methods involve a very concrete and complex listening experience which one must learn to interpret.