Nobel Prize

To Dr. Willcm Einthoven, physiological researcher of Leyden University, Holland, went the Nobel Prize for outstanding achievement in Medicine and Physics during 1924. He has invented a device by which the beat of the human heart may be seen, measured, photographed, diseases of the heart detected, its action studied. It was in recognition of this device that the prize was awarded. Dr. Einthoven. genial 64-year-old Dutchman, is now visiting the U. S. He is sprightly, small, with a small grey beard, small grey mustache, wears in his countenance the alert and boyish shyness peculiar to men who have spent their lives probing into the physical mysteries of humanity. To a select company of surgeons in Manhattan he explained his invention:

Whenever the heart beats, electricity flows over the body's circuit. Dr. Einthoven's device records the fluctuations of this current by means of two wires of quartz, so fine that they are invisible even under a microscope, unless thrown into relief by light against a dark background. These wires are threaded across the magnetic field formed between the polar ends of an electromagnet. In each pole of the magnet is screwed a microscope, one lending light, the other enlargement. Rubber manacles are placed over the wrists of the patient. Under each manacle is a salt pad (electric conductor) from which a wire runs, bearing the current of the body to the quartz threads where they are stretched, shining in shadow, watched by the microscope and the lens of a special camera. The pulse moves in and out, currents move over the body and shake the threads, by whose photographed waverings the heart is studied. If the beat is regular and stout, the quartz will fluctuate in an even pattern on the photographic plate; if the heart limps the pattern, too, will vary; and its varytions may be accurately measured.