Reverend Stephen Hales is the father of sphygmomano-metry. During his seven-year course in theology at Corpus
Christi (Bene’t College), Cambridge in 1733, mathematics and science were added to basic theology and philosophy. It was at Cambridge where he initially experimented on pressure, resistance, and flow. He later became curate of Teddington outside of London, received his BA, and was awarded an MA at Cambridge and Bachelor of Divinity from Oxford.
Some years later he commenced his experimental sci¬entific work on the circulation of blood. He conducted more than 25 experiments on dogs and horses. Figure 1 is an artist’s impression of Hale’s experiments to determine the blood pressure of a horse. His observations were pub¬lished in Volume II of the Statical Essays in 1733:
. . . in the summer I caused the mare to be tied down alive on her back; having laid open the left crural artery about three inches from her belly, I inserted into it a brass pipe whose bore was one sixth of an inch in diameter. . .. I fixed a glass tube of nearly the same diameter which was 9 feet in length: then untying the ligature of the artery, the blood rose in the tube 8 feet 3 inches perpendicular above the level of the left ventricle of the heart;. . . when it was at its full height it would rise and fall at and after each pulse 2, 3, or 4 inches . . . .’’

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