In Glasgow, Doctor Ian Donald worked,
He cared for mothers, standing by their side,
In nineteen fifty-five, he felt for lumps,
He often had to guess what was inside,
Near Glasgow, men built boilers out of steel,
Their probe found hidden cracks by sending sound,
A crack would send an echo back to them,
One day, he brought his jars of lumps around.
The probe sends ultrasound inside,
And Donald used sound too high to hear,
It comes back like a shout in a cave,
The echoes make a picture appear,
It found the cracks in boiler steel,
That's the boilermaker's echo.
He tested lumps, and a steak to compare,
The echoes showed which lumps were fluid-filled,
Back on the ward, a bucket held the probe,
It wobbled on a belly till it spilled,
Then Tom Brown, an engineer, came to help,
Now the probe could touch the skin and glide,
The echoes jumped as spikes upon a screen,
So Tom Brown wanted pictures from inside.
The probe sends ultrasound inside,
And Donald used sound too high to hear,
It comes back like a shout in a cave,
The echoes make a picture appear,
It found the cracks in boiler steel,
That's the boilermaker's echo.
Some doctors laughed at Donald's echoes,
A woman's lump seemed cancer, plain as day,
But the echoes showed a bag of fluid,
When it came out, her sickness went away.
Today you watch beside your mother's bed,
The probe glides on her belly, nice and slow,
The echoes make a picture on the screen,
And there's the baby, waving hello.
The probe sends ultrasound inside,
And Donald used sound too high to hear,
It comes back like a shout in a cave,
The echoes make a picture appear,
Now it shows a baby inside,
That's the boilermaker's echo.
With ultrasound, Donald could see inside.
