Tag Archives: Stephen Hales

Theo’s marvelous medicine

August 2, 2019

Joseph deBettencourt Chicago, Illinois, USA   Illustration of the Wade-Dahl-Till shunt from the original patent application. Wade, Stanley C. (1966) US Patent No.3233610. Retrieved from On a cool December day in 1960, a nanny was pushing an infant in a stroller down 85th Street in New York City. Stepping into the road, the nanny saw […]

Stephen Hales: belief and blood pressure

October 9, 2018

Joseph deBettencourt Chicago, Illinois, United States “It would but ill become us in this our State of Uncertainty, to treat the Errors and Mistakes of others with Scorn and Contempt, when we ourselves see Things but as through a Glass darkly, and are very far from any Pretensions to Infallibility” — Stephen Hales, Haemastatics   […]

Stephen Hales: the priest who pioneered clinical physiology

January 29, 2017

JMS Pearce Hull, United Kingdom   As a student I learned about Stephen Hales as the parish priest who first measured blood pressure — in a horse’s leg. The mists of time and waning memory have made his several astonishingly original works unknown to many. Samuel Johnson’s famous dictionary made few references to individuals, but […]