The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1922-09-01
WATCHES IN MEDICINE.
Two Centuries Have Passed Since the
Pulse Watch Was Invented.

No detail in medical practice is re-
peated more frequently than Is the count
ing of the pulse The physician is COM
monty pictured, watch in hand, deter
mining the rate of the heart beat through
count of the arterial pulse. An accurate
estimate of this factor requires an in
strument of precision to mark some de-
finite interval of time The timepieces
now in use are comparatively modern
inventions In his Fitzpatrick lectures
on Greek medicine in Rome Sir Clifford
Allbutt has designated HerOphiluS as the
first physician to count the pulSe-it is
said by a water tube clock-and thus
to bring it definitely into semeiology.
It is occasionally stated 4&f the Ger
man Cardinal NikOlaus Krebs of Cues
on the AIoselle. who lived in the ffteeneh
century, suggested devices for counting
the pulse. though there is no evidence
that his schemes were ever carried out.
Calico counted the pulse by means of a
pendulum, and the late s. Wier Mitchell
has left an interesting account of the
pulSilOgium of those earlier days when
real timekeepers suitable for pulse count
ing did not vet exist.
In a recent essay on the history of
pulse timing Rosenbloom of Pittsburgh
has called attention anew to the de-
serts Of Sir John Floyer as the first of
the mOderns to make regular observa-
tiOns on the rate of the pulse, counting
the number of beats in the minute by
the watch. Before this time. though
other points connected with the pulse
had been extensively studied and pulse
doctrines abounded in great numbers
The ordinary watch used in Floyer's
The ordinary watch used in Ffoyer's
time had only q single hand. 1t re-
corded neither minutes nor seconds.
FlOyer's ''physician's pulse watch" ran
only sixty seconds, the date 1907 mark
ing the year of the announcement of its
medical application.
In these times, when even seconds
count much. it seems odd to bark back
to a period only two centuries ago when
evidently the minute had not vet en-
tered the daily life of man. While the
doctrine of the specific pulSes-a pulse
for every malady-waS dying hard in
the days of observation gone infinitely
mad, a whole Liliiput of symptoms.
an exasperating waste of human intelli-
gence," as Mitchell has written. the
pulse rate so much stressed in these
later years was rarely heard of. 1t
seems incredible, says Mitchell, but not
until the later French school developed
its force can one find in reports Of
cases the beginnings of those system
attic numeratiOns of the breath and the
pulse which are encountered in modern
case records. 1t remained for the inf1u-
ence of the great Dublin school, to
which RieSman has lately paid literary
tribute, to bring about conditions under
which the familiar figure of the physi-
clan, watch in hand. has become COM
monplace. This timepiece has become a
medical instrument of precision. and has
given accuracy t. the estimate of the
heart rate.
we could better lose this knowl-
edge" Mitchell has written, than the
rest Of what the pulse teaches, and yet
it is the only pulse sign we can put on
paper with perfect precision. as Heber-
den remared a hundred years ago.
journal American Medical Society.