Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Midwives delivered babies, and those illnesses not cured by home remedies were left to run
their fatal course. Only in the twentieth century did the tremendous explosion in scientific
knowledge and technology lead to the development of the American health care system,
with the hospital as its focal point and the specialist physician and nurse as its most visible
operatives.
In the twentieth century, the advances made in the basic sciences (chemistry, physiology,
pharmacology, and so on) began to occur much more rapidly. Discoveries in the physical
sciences enabled medical researchers to take giant strides forward. For example, in 1903,
William Einthoven devised the first electrocardiograph and measured the electrical changes
that occurred during the beating of the heart (Figure 1.3). In the process, Einthoven initiated
a new age for both cardiovascular medicine and electrical measurement techniques.
Of all the new discoveries that followed one another like intermediates in a chain reac-
tion, the most significant for clinical medicine was the development of x-rays. When
W. K. Roentgen described his “new kinds of rays,” the human body was opened to medical
inspection. Initially these x-rays were used in the diagnosis of bone fractures and disloca-
tions. In the United States, x-ray machines brought this “modern technology” to most urban
hospitals. In the process, separate departments of radiology were established, and the influ-
ence of their activities spread with almost every department of medicine (surgery, gyne-
cology, and so forth) advancing with the aid of this new tool. By the 1930s, x-ray visualization
FIGURE 1.3
(a) An early electrocardiograph machine and
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