Heart studies, chiefly clinical. 1, The pulse-sensations : a study in tactile sphygmology / by Wm. Ewart.

  • Ewart, William, 1848-1929.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Heart studies, chiefly clinical. 1, The pulse-sensations : a study in tactile sphygmology / by Wm. Ewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    clature, without any addition whether in the shape of fresh advances, or even of intelligent criticism, served to prove that forty years had not sufficed to make the work bear its fruit, which was to be reserved for a more distant future. Since Galen, Fouquet was the earliest teacher of an accurate and thoughtful palpation of the pulse, and in that sense the father of modern tactile sphygmologij. He was the first, and he remains the only, observer who has bequeathed to us the picture of his own personal tactile judgments. Although he did not rise to the conception of Watt's approaching discovery of a method of automatic registration,* nor of its application to the registration of physiological events, still his claims to be regarded as an early pioneer, if not the founder, of the graphic method, in the broader sense, that of delineating the internal phenomena of life, are of no trivial order as may be gathered from the following extract : f Quant a l'institution ou emploi des signes mechaniques, tels que les figures dont nous avons parle, c'est ici, comrrie on voit, un instrument nouveau, un surcroit de moyeus pour avancer dans la doctrine du Pouls; c'est en merne terns la preuve demonstrative des verites, que les anciens& les modernes ont enseignees sur cette matiere: ces signes devroient, par toutes ces raisons, etre precieux .... * Ch. Ozanam (La Circulation et le Pouls, Paris, 1886, p. 397) points out that automatic registration was first employed by Ons-en-Bray (Mem. de l'Acad. des Sciences, Paris, 1734) who used a revolving cylinder in con- nection with an anemometer; and that Eutherford, in 1734, obtained thermometer tracings on blackened paper ; whilst Thomas Young invented the method of continuous spiral tracings. t Henri Fouquet, Essai sur le Pouls, par rapport aux affections des principaux organes, avec des figures qui repr6sentent les caracttres du Pouls, dans ces affections, p. xii. Montpellier, 1767.