PEC'TORIL'OQUY (from Lat. peetas, breast + kopi, to speak). The term applied to a distinct transmission of articulate voiee-sonnds when the car or stethoscope of the listener is placed upon the chest wall. This phenomenon was discovered and named by L:ennee (q.v.). In the normal chest the voice sound is transmitted through the lung substance of the patient to the ear of the listener only as a distant, mutlled sound, known as rocal resonance. Over the bronchi this vocal resonance is increased, the voice sounds become nearer and louder. When there is an approach to articulate speech, this is called bronchopliony, and occurs also over por tions of lung tissue which have become solidi fied by disease. In pectoriloquy, however, the voice is not only louder and plainer, but words and even syllables are perceived with startling distinctness. The pathological conditions under which this occurs are either a consolidation of the lung substance connecting a large bronchus with the chest wall, which consolidation acts as an unusually perfect conductor of the vocal vi brations; the presence of a cavity in the lung having free communication with a bronehus, in which case the sound is conveyed by air; a imetnnothorax having open connection with a bronchus; or. more rarely, compression of the
lung by an extensive pleuritic effusion. (See PLEumsv.) As a rule pectoriloquy is preted preted to mean the existence of a cavity in the ' lung with a thin layer of solidified tissue be tween it and the chest wall.
Whispering pectorilda a g is produced, under the same conditions mentioned above, when the patient whispers instead of talking. it is a curiously distinct reproduction of the whispered words, and is a test of much delicacy and ex actness.