Almost everyone today must have paid a visit to a doctor or to a hospital. ‘Health is wealth’ says one old wise saying. And ‘an apple a day, keeps the doctor away’ says another saying. These sayings are great in themselves, but a fact that cannot be altered is that we all need doctors.

From the time we are born, in the modern world today, we are delivered with help from doctors. If we fall ill we go to a doctor to be treated. Like it or not a doctor is the one who checks us and pronounces us as dead. The entire circle of life from birth to death sees a doctor playing a very important role.

Doctors perform their duties with the help of a plethora of medical equipments. We have seen them often and dislike some of them like the injection that is painful but essential to get well soon. An injection is generally made up of a syringe and a needle. Injections are administered to ones muscles, veins, etc as per the need and are used in immunizations, blood transfusions and to administer medicinal fluids.

The stethoscope is another instrument that one has often seen with the doctor. The stethoscope is an instrument that one often associates with the medical profession. The stethoscope was first used in the early Greek period. The name is an amalgamation of two Greek words stetho meaning chest and scope meaning examination.

The instrument is acoustic and is used to hear the internal sounds in the body. Doctors have been using it for many years to listen to the sound of blood flowing in the arteries and veins, the sound of the intestines, the heart, lungs and other internal organs and process that go on in the body.

Sometimes doctors use stethoscopes with sphygmomanometer or the blood pressure machine to measure ones blood pressure. The machine has a pump and a mercury manometer or pressure meter which it uses to measure ones blood pressure in terms of mercury millimeters.

The thermometer is another common medical instrument that one finds at the doctor. Today, with coughs, colds and fevers becoming a daily affair this instrument is not only restricted to a doctor’s dispensary or a hospital but is even seen in many homes.

This instrument like the stethoscope has Greek origins and gets its name from thermos that means hot and metros that means to measure. The thermometer has mercury in its bulb and shows readings as per the hotness of one’s body. A temperature reading of 100 and above on the thermometer indicates that one has developed a fever.

The weighing scale is yet another medical equipment that is used by doctors. With health becoming a very important facet in the world today and people keeping a check on their weight often, many homes have weighing scales.

Based on the simple principle of the spring balance the weighing scale is used by doctors to check patients BMI or body mass index. This is very important for a patient to be healthy, since today a number of diseases are lifestyle based.

These five are basic medical equipment that one sees on a visit to the doctor, our doctor may use one more than the other but on a routine checkup these are basic equipment that doctors from physicians to specialists to surgeons all use to detect diseases and treat patients.

Jerry Kurtz, an enthusiast blogger and a specialist in medical silicone design and molding provides news and discussion on medical silicone design, prototyping, manufacturing, and quality control through his site Silicone Pro.