BALLISTOCARDIOGRAPHY IN MEDICAL PRACTICE

Seventy years elapsed between the description by Gordon¹ of a method for graphically recording the motion of the body with each heart beat and Starr's Harvey Lecture² reporting how such curves could be used in routine clinical diagnosis. Most ballistocardiographs are bulky; the latest model to be described weighs over a ton without the recording mechanism.³ However, since 1949 there have been available three systems for recording the body's motion with very simple attachments to any type of electrocardiograph,⁴ and routine use by practitioners, industrial medical and insurance examiners has become a reality. Physicians not only use the ballistocardiograph on patients, but have it used on themselves as they enter the "coronary age." It therefore is desirable to put before them a brief description of this simple diagnostic method.

When the body lies on a smooth solid surface, it moves with each respiratory and each cardiac