Ludimar hermann biography of williams

The background of electrophysiology

We have come a long way. Willem Einthoven (1860-1927) needed a 600-pound machine and five operators to capture the first PQRST complex in a human in 1901. The patient had to put two hands and one foot in a bucket with electrolyte solution to obtain a 3-lead electrocardiogram (ECG). Today we take our smartphone and use two fingers to register an ECG [1]. Although electrophysiology may sound like a new field, bioelectricity (in animals) was discovered in 1791 by Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) [2]. Centuries of discourse on anatomy and physiology passed before recording ECGs became feasible.

Pulse and heartbeat

It all started much earlier: in the Chinese and Arab world, pulse measurement had already been practiced for centuries: Wang Chu Ho was said to have authored ten books alone on the pulse by 280 BC [2] and Pien Ts’lo is said to have been the first to have recognised the pulse as a diagnostic toom in the fifth century [3].; The ancient Egyptians described the pulse in the ‘Eber-papers’ [2].

Many centuries later in Europe, Sanctorius Sanctorius (1561-1636) developed techniques for clinical measurements such as pulse rate [4, 5]. In 1717, Marcus Gerbezius (1658-1718) performed a very accurate pulse analysis and described sym

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