The Pulse Watch 1707 – You cannot manage what you do not measure

According to medical historian Logan Clendening, “No science can reach maturity until it acquires methods of measurement. Clinical medicine could not progress until it obtained objective methods that determined or measured the nature and extent of organic disease present in a patient’s body.” (see The surprising history of health recordkeeping).

One very important medical observation involves the periodic expansion of an artery caused by the pumping of blood through heart contractions, which we now call the pulse. For much of history, measuring the pulse accurately was difficult, and the first pocket watches had no second hand.

Medical historian Denis Gibbs writes: “Sir John Floyer can rightly be credited with inventing the first effective precision instrument worthy of application in clinical practice. He also tabulated the vital signs of pulse and respiratory rates measured under different conditions in a way that remained unparalleled for 150 years.”

Floyer, an English physician, was dismayed that there was no easy or standard way to measure the pulse at a patient’s bedside, so he invented the pulse watch, a portable instrument designed to run for exactly one minute. In 1707, Floyer published The Physician’s Pulse Watch meaning (The Doctor’s Pulse Watch). In the same year, the watch was offered commercially, now with a second hand and a pin to stop it. Measuring beats per minute eventually became a common measurement and an essential part of medical examinations, and portable watches were associated with doctors for more than 200 years.

Interest in the pulse dates back to ancient times. For example, the Ancient Greek physician Herophilus tried to measure pulse rates using a water clock (a clock in which time is measured by the flow of liquid). Today, it can be used to indicate diseases such as arrhythmias (abnormal pulses), dehydration (fluid loss) and Stokes-Adams syndrome, as well as vascular blockages in people with diabetes or atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) caused by high cholesterol.

Floyer was known for some eccentricities and was an important advocate of cold bathing for health. He sometimes forced his patients to bathe in very uncomfortable icy water.

Description of the article image: A doctor taking a woman’s pulse (1665), oil on canvas, by the Dutch artist Jan Steen (1626–1679).

Historical figures mentioned in the article: Herophilus of Chalcedon (335 B.C.–280 B.C.), Sir John Floyer (1649–1734)

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