Quotes About Auscultation

I was given a stethoscope in a child's 'doctor's bag' at about age six and I loved it! One could hear the heart beating through that plastic toy.

When discussing the rise and fall of empires, it is as well to mark their rate of growth, avoiding the temptation to telescope time and discover too early signs of greatness in a state which we know will one day be great, or to predict too early the collapse of an empire which we know will one day cease to be. The life-span of empires cannot be plotted by events, only by careful diagnosis and auscultation--and as in medicine there is always room for error.

A true empiricism is one that sets itself the task of getting as close as possible to the original, of sounding the depths of life, of feeling the pulse of its spirit by a sort of intellectual auscultation; we listen in on the current of life. By direct perception we feel the presence of the mind; by intellectual circumlocution we arrive at the notion that thought is a dance of molecules in the brain. Is there any doubt that intuition here beholds more truly the heart of life?