Sound / by John Tyndall.

  • Tyndall, John, 1820-1893.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sound / by John Tyndall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    63/494 (page 41)
    IIOOKE'S ANTICIPATION OF THE STETHOSCOPE. § 14. Hooke's anticipation of the Stethoscope. I will conclude this lecture on the transmission of sound through gases, liquids, and solids by a quaint and beautiful extract from the writings of that admirable thinker, Dr. Kobert Hooke. It will be noticed that the philosophy of the stethoscope is enunciated in the following passage, and another could hardly be found which illustrates so .well that action of the scientific imagination which, in all great investigators, is the pre- cursor and associate of experiment: < There may also be a possibility,' writes Hooke, < of discovering the internal motions and actions of bodies by the sound they make. Who knows but that, as in a watch, we may hear the beating of the balance, and the running of the wheels, and the striking of the hammers, and the grating of the teeth, and multitudes of other noises; who knows, I say, but that it may be possible to discover the motions of the internal parts of bodies, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, by the sound they make ; that one may discover the works performed in the several offices and shops of a man's body, and thereby discover what instru- ment or engine is out of order, what works are going on at several times, and lie still at others, and the like; that in plants and vegetables one might discover by the noise the pumps for raising the juice, the valves for stopping it, and the rushing of it out of one passage into another, and the like? I could proceed further, but methinks I can hardly forbear to blush when I consider how the most part of men will look upon this: but, yet again, I have this encouragement, not to think all these things utterly im- possible, though never so much derided by the generality of men, and never so seemingly mad, foolish, and phantas- tic, that as the thinking them impossible cannot much im- prove my knowledge, so the believing them possible may,