DE GERON, Cassey Murielle B.

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G21 – BIOENGINEERING

1. ELECTROCARDIOGRAM (ECG)
 Description: Electrocardiography is the process of producing an
electrocardiogram, a recording – a graph of voltage versus time – of the electrical
activity of the heart using electrodes placed on the skin.
 History: In the 1786, Dr. Luigi Galvani, an Italian physician and physicist at the
University of Bologna, first noted that electrical current could be recorded from
skeletal muscles. He recorded electrical activity from dissected muscles. In 1842,
Dr. Carlo Matteucci, a professor of physics at the University of Pisa,
demonstrated that electrical current accompanies every heart beat in a frog.
Thirty-five years later, Augustus Waller, a British physiologist of St Mary's
Medical School in London, published the first human electrocardiogram using a
capillary electrometer and electrodes placed on the chest and back of a human. He
demonstrated that electrical activity preceded ventricular contraction. In 1891,
William Bayliss and Edward Starling, British physiologists of University College
London, demonstrated triphasic cardiac electrical activity in each beat using an
improved capillary electrometer.
 Experience: Last August 14, I was give the chance to use an ecg machine because
I was having chest pains for a week which resulted in being diagnosed with an
irregular or abnormal heartbeat. The test didn’t last long. I was told during the test
that I should lift up my shirt and the nurse attached “suctions” on my chest and
clips on my hands.

2. SYRINGE & NEEDLES

 Description: A tube with a nozzle and piston or bulb for sucking in and ejecting
liquid in a thin stream, used for cleaning wounds or body cavities, or fitted with a
hollow needle for injecting or withdrawing fluids.
 History: The first syringes were used in Roman times during the 1st century AD.
They are mentioned in a journal called De Medicina as being used to treat medical
complications. Then, in the 9th century AD, an Egyptian surgeon created a
syringe using a hollow glass tube and suction. In 1650 Blaise Pascal invented a
syringe as an application of fluid mechanics that is now called Pascal’s law. He
used it in testing his theory that pressure exerted anywhere in a confined fluid is
transmitted equally in all directions and that the pressure variations remain the
same. An Irish physician named Francis Rynd invented the hollow needle and
used it to make the first recorded subcutaneous injections in 1844. Then shortly
 thereafter in 1853 Charles Pravaz and Alexander Wood developed a medical
hypodermic syringe with a needle fine enough to pierce the skin. Alexander
Wood experimented with injected morphine to treat nerve conditions. He and his
wife subsequently became addicted to morphine and his wife is recorded as the
first woman to die of an injected drug overdose. In 1899 Letitia Mumford Geer of
New York was granted a patent for a syringe design that permitted the user to
operate it one-handed. However things got more interesting and advanced in 1946
when Chance Brothers in England produced the first all-glass syringe with an
interchangeable barrel and plunger. This was revolutionary because it allowed the
mass-sterilization of the different components without needing to match up the
individual parts.
 Experience: Also last august 14, I had to take a blood test for my cholesterol
because it was supposedly one of the factors that could affect my chest pains.

3. X-RAY
 Description: X-rays make up X-radiation, a form of high-energy electromagnetic
radiation.
 History: X-rays were discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845-
1923) who was a Professor at Wuerzburg University in Germany. Working with a
cathode-ray tube in his laboratory, Roentgen observed a fluorescent glow of
crystals on a table near his tube. The tube that Roentgen was working with
consisted of a glass envelope (bulb) with positive and negative electrodes
encapsulated in it. The air in the tube was evacuated, and when a high voltage was
applied, the tube produced a fluorescent glow. Roentgen shielded the tube with
heavy black paper, and discovered a green colored fluorescent light generated by
a material located a few feet away from the tube.
 Experience: I was also given the opportunity to get a chest x-ray last august 14
because my doctor thought that my chest pains could be because of my kungs or
kidney.