The Stethoscope Song. A Professional Ballad
THERE was a young man in Boston town,
He bought him a stethoscope nice and new,
All mounted and finished and polished down,
With an ivory cap and a stopper too.
It happened a spider within did crawl,
And spun him a web of ample size,
Wherein there chanced one day to fall
A couple of very imprudent flies.
The first was a bottle-fly, big and blue,
The second was smaller, and thin and long;
So there was a concert between the two,
Like an octave flute and a tavern gong.
Now being from Paris but recently,
This fine young man would show his skill;
And so they gave him, his hand to try,
A hospital patient extremely ill.
Some said that his liver was short of bile,
And some that his heart was over size,
While some kept arguing, all the while,
He was crammed with tubercles up to his eyes.
This fine young man then up stepped he,
And all the doctors made a pause;
Said he, The man must die, you see,
By the fifty-seventh of Louis’s laws.
But since the case is a desperate one,
To explore his chest it may be well;
For if he should die and it were not done,
You know the autopsy would not tell.
Then out his stethoscope he took,
And on it placed his curious ear;
Mon Dieu! said he, with a knowing look,
Why, here is a sound that ’s mighty queer.
The bourdonnement is very clear,—Â
Amphoric buzzing, as I’m alive
Five doctors took their turn to hear;
Amphoric buzzing, said all the five.
There’s empyema beyond a doubt;
We’ll plunge a trocar in his side.
The diagnosis was made out,—Â
They tapped the patient; so he died.
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poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Added by Poetry Lover
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