The sphygmograph : its history and use as an aid to diagnosis in ordinary practice / by R.E. Dudgeon.

  • Dudgeon, R. E. (Robert Ellis), 1820-1904.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sphygmograph : its history and use as an aid to diagnosis in ordinary practice / by R.E. Dudgeon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    maximus, tremulus, and other varieties, now forgotten. Our old physicians never quite attained the skill in pulse-feeling of which their Chinese colleagues boast, who pretend to distinguish upwards of three thousand varieties of pulses; but then the Celestials have been so much longer at the business than their occidental brethren, and have ac- quired such skill in the art that they are said to be able to diagnose every disease by the pulse alone, whereas European doctors have always considered it necessary to supplement the knowledge conveyed by the pulse by other sources of information. When instrumental aids to diagnosis began to be introduced by the inventions of the stethoscope and pleximeter, the various spe- cula, the microscope, and the other 'scopes and 'meters that now form the everyday ar- mamentarium of the physician, the art of pulse-feeling was neglected or performed in a perfunctory manner, and its importance was regarded as a very secondary affair. But the pulse could not for ever remain beyond the reach of instrumental investiga-