ER Assistant

History of the ER

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The emergency room was invented after World War II when there was a baby boom and urban sprawl which resulted in the medical industries having to adapt to larger populations. Hospitals were viewed as life-saving centers because of the new medical technology that was developing like CT scans and cardiac monitoring, which added more pressure to the healthcare systems.

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During the Korean War, people started to realize that emergency rooms were really under staffed because the emergency room was usually a small room with one nurse. So in 1961, a group of four physicians from Alexandria, Virginia, left their practices and began to offer full-time service in the emergency department. Soon, other physicians in Flint and Pontiac, Michigan followed suit. 

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History of Blood Pressure 

   

There are many events in the past that led to the development of today’s blood pressure monitors. For many years, the blood pressure machines have been the same up until recently. Now you can check your own blood pressure whenever you want. 

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In the 1500's, studying human anatomy first-hand was becoming more common but referring to past publications was still more important than actual observations. Even Leonardo Da Vinci referred to past publications and he drew a heart with only two chambers. In 1543, Andreas Vesalius shared “De Humani Corporis Fabrica,” a book he wrote after studying real bodies. For the first time it was known that the heart had four chambers and not two. But that is not all! At that time, the heart’s function was still under debate.

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The first test of what was then called “the force of blood” is told in the book “Haema staticks” in 1733, made by Stephan Hales. He used a water pressure gauge to measure the blood pressure in the blood vessels of different types of animals. Today, we still use the stethoscope as an essential tool for measuring blood pressures. It was the first blood pressure tool invented by a French doctor named Rene Laennec in 1817. This meant that doctors no longer needed to put their ears to patients' bodies at all! The auscultatory method he used using the stethoscope was to tell the difference between the systole and diastole pressures.

 

In 1828, Jean Poiseuille invented a blood pressure gauge from a mercury manometer and used it to calculate blood pressure using the centimeters of mercury, which is also being used today. In 1896, Scipione Rocci invented the first blood pressure assessor. It is a blood pressure meter with a cuff made by Dunlop. However, the cuff wasn't big enough to give any correct calculations. A few years later, in 1905, improvements were made to the sphygmomanometer by a Russian physician named Nikolai Korotkov.