Augustus Désiré Waller

A toy train was used in experiments.

An early commercial ECG machine, built in 1911 by the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company

Alexander Muirhead is reported to have attached wires to a feverish patient's wrist to obtain a record of the patient's heartbeat in 1872 at St Bartholomew's Hospital, but Augustus Waller is recognised as the first person to create a machine that allowed a heartbeat to be recorded in real time. Waller used an existing device called a a Lippmann capillary electrometer fixed to a projector. The trace from the heartbeat was projected onto a photographic plate that was fixed to a toy train.

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Augustus Désiré Waller was born in Paris and educated in Geneva. His father was Augustus Volnay Waller who was already famous for his work in understanding the nervous system.

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He went to Aberdeen to qualify in medicine and decided that physiology was to be his life. He became a lecturer at the London School of Medicine for Women, where one of his students was Alice Palmer, biscuit heiress of Huntley and Palmer. They married, bought a large house in Grove End Road, St John's Wood, and Alice's dowry (£70 000) supported Waller and a large family for the rest of their days.
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Waller became lecturer in charge of physiology at St Mary's Hospital, and there made his one important contribution to medicine - his recording of the first human electrocardiogram. He lectured on it in Europe and America, usually showing the same tracing, so was clearly a showman! He bred bulldogs and his favourite, Jimmie, starred in many of his electrocardiogram demonstrations, philosophically standing in pots of saline for hours on end.
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Despite his success, Waller failed to see the medical potential in the electrocardiogram and it was Dutch doctor and physiologist Willem Einthoven who developed the idea into a practical system for use in medicine. Einthoven said he owed his interest in the subject to hearing Waller lecture on it and Einthoven was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on the electrocardiogram.

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Though the basic principles of that era are still in use today, many advances in electrocardiography have been made over the years. Instrumentation has evolved from a cumbersome laboratory apparatus to compact electronic systems that now include computerized interpretation of the electrocardiogram.

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What is electrocardiogram

Electrocardiography (ECG or EKG) is the process of recording the electrical activity of the heart over a period of time using electrodes placed on a patient's body. These electrodes detect the tiny electrical changes on the skin that arise from the heart muscle activity during each heartbeat. During each heartbeat, a healthy heart will have an orderly activity.

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Among other things, an electrocardiogram can be used to measure the rate and rhythm of heartbeats, the size and position of the heart chambers, the presence of any damage to the heart's muscle cells or conduction system, the effects of cardiac drugs, and the function of implanted pacemakers.

Source: Wikipedia/ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Photo: Unknown/Wikimedia • Believed to be in the Public Domain (Age - Copyright expired)