Stethoscope

A bizarre NetHack tool that would be entirely useless except that you can apply it once per turn at no time cost; that is, it doesn't count as your action for that turn. Applying it more than once per turn will cost you one turn per use. The stethoscope will sometimes probe adjacent monsters, showing their hit point totals, etc, and will also find secret passages. A cursed stethoscope has a 50% chance of just hearing your own heartbeat. The whole thing is pretty sketchy -- I'd keep your distance from a NetHack player who regularly uses a stethoscope.

Applying a stethoscope produces some funny messages in certain situations:

Applying to a corpse, when hallucinating:
"You hear a voice say, "It's dead, Jim."

Applying to a statue:
"The grid bug seems to be in excellent health for a statue."

Trying to apply it to an invalid location:
"You hear a faint typing noise."

A medical instrument which consists of a couple of earpieces, a bell and/or diaphragm and tubing connecting it all together. It works by transmitting sound and enables the doctor or nurse to hear sounds at the other end of the stethoscope.

Essentially, a stethoscope exists for the purpose of eliminating the need for a doctor to directly place his/her ear on the patient to hear sounds. It just would not be elegant for a doctor to listen several times on a patients by leaning against the patient.

Use of the stethoscope is necessary for the auscultation bit of the physical examination.

Steth"o*scope (?), n. [Gr. the breast + -scope: cf. F. st'ethoscope.] Med.

An instrument used in auscultation for examining the organs of the chest, as the heart and lungs, by conveying to the ear of the examiner the sounds produced in the thorax.

 

© Webster 1913.

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Steth"o*scope, v. t.

To auscultate, or examine, with a stethoscope.

M. W. Savage.

 

© Webster 1913.