Article ID: CBB348927946

The Art of Stethoscope Use: Diagnostic Listening Practices of Medical Physicians and 'Auto-Doctors' (2014)

unapi

Since the early years of the trade, car mechanics were often referred to as 'autodoctors', a figuration most easily discernible in the field's advertisements and trade journals. This linking of car repair craft skills to the clinical expertise of medical physicians is often suggested through depictions of this 'auto-doctor' using a stethoscope. Beyond being emblematic of a doctor's vocation, referencing this tool underlines a tradition common to both professions: namely, of training the expert's senses to detect and analyse problems in cars and human bodies by their sounds. However, with the advent of more visual forms of diagnosis (e.g., X-rays) in the 1950s and 1960s, medical auscultation's real potential was more and more frequently put into question. Roughly at the same time, similar shifts from sonic to visual means of diagnosis (e.g., oscilloscopes) occurred in the car mechanics trade. This article explores connections between the two very different fields of medical diagnosis and car repair through an investigation of their 'sonic skills' (the listening skills and other skills needed to employ the took for listening). This comparison is developed first through delineating the bodily, cognitive and socio-technical aspects of diagnostic listening, for which examining different teaching strategies for learning such techniques in both fields are revelatory. We examine each technique's key dispositions and contexts of enactment, including uses of the stethoscope and other tools, particular listening protocols and bodily postures and ways of sharing and communicating about perceived acoustic information within professional settings. Finally, we explore how listening is equally engaged in the construction of professional identities, including relationships between experts and non-experts.

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Authors & Contributors
Borghi, Luca
Beatty, Joel Scott
Nott, John
Hristova, Stefka
Anna Harris
Richard A. Reinhart
Concepts
Medical instruments and apparatus
Medicine and technology, relationships
Diagnosis
Medical technology
Medicine
Surgery
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
19th century
21st century
Modern
20th century, early
Places
United States
Great Britain
Japan
Italy
Europe
Switzerland
Institutions
Royal Society of London
Imperatorskii Institut Eksperimental'noi Meditsiny v Sankt-Peterburge
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