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By Root 1108 0

of artery, an accomplished physician could derive a full accounting of every internal organ as well as a sense of the subtlest qualities of yin and yang, the positive and negative cosmic forces that balance in good health. The physician intuitively correlated into his reading a bewildering string of external factors—the climate, the direction of the wind, colors, odors, tastes, sounds, the natural elements, the positions of constellations, and more—and arrived at a diagnosis. To a Westerner such as myself, this ability seems almost supernatural and far-fetched. I find a stronger resonance in the text’s evocative characterizations. The resting pulse rate of a healthy heart will resemble “a piece of wood floating on water,” for instance, and the throb of a vigorous heart “should feel like continuous hammer blows.” The pulses relating to unhealthy conditions are also lyrical. A sickly pulse might reverberate like “the notes of a string instrument” or feel like “fish gliding through waves”—descriptions that nonetheless thrum and flicker with life.

Dr. Broadbent was never so poetic. On the contrary, he encouraged physicians to express no personal style whatsoever when writing about a patient’s pulse, thus eliminating the risk of ambiguity. The rate of pulse beats should be described as either frequent or infrequent, he insisted, with no shades in between. Arteries were large or small, and the “tension” or blood pressure within them high or low. What’s interesting is that this colorless vocabulary obviously did not reflect his wonder at the pulse. “It is impossible to examine a large number of pulses,” he enthused, “without being struck by the extraordinary diversity of frequency, size, character, tension, and force met with.” Of course, Broadbent’s contribution to his field went beyond the crafting of a glossary. During his nearly four decades at St. Mary’s Hospital, he was able to confirm definitively the link between high blood pressure and disease, paying particular note to hypertension in late-stage kidney disease. He was also among the first researchers to elucidate the risks of low blood pressure. In his midsixties William Henry Broadbent was recognized as one of Great Britain’s leading clinicians.

A year after The Pulse was published, he was contacted by officials at Buckingham Palace. The queen’s grandson, Prince George of Wales, had come down with typhoid fever, and the doctor’s expertise was requested. He remained in attendance at the prince’s residence for a month, seeing the twenty-six-year-old through to a complete recovery. Not a week had passed before he was summoned yet again. Now one of George’s brothers had been stricken by influenza, and he died in a matter of days. Word reached Dr. Broadbent that Her Majesty, Queen Victoria herself, wished to see him. Somehow I doubt he was expecting a promotion.

“The Queen sent for me about 3, and I had to tell her the whole story of the illness,” he wrote in a letter to his sister, dated January 17, 1892. “She was sitting in an ordinary chair at a writing table, and of course I had to stand. I was there almost exactly an hour and a quarter.” Though he betrays not a whit of emotion in this retelling, the royal visit did go well. Soon thereafter he was appointed Physician Extraordinary to Queen Victoria.

William Broadbent held the queen’s wrist. Now a queen holds mine: one named Ernesto, the physician’s assistant in my doctor’s office. Up to this point on a recent visit, nothing extraordinary has occurred. A good forty minutes after my arrival, Ernesto flung open the inner office door and sang out, “Willlllllyaaaammm!” He then weighed me in the hallway, led me into a stuffy cubicle, quizzed me about why I’d come, and just as I was beginning to regret making the appointment—to broach the topic of anti-anxiety medication, no less—something relatively pleasant happened: The room went quiet. It was time for Ernesto to check my pulse.

At that moment it seemed as if a tiny Dr. Broadbent perched atop Ernesto’s hooped earring, whispering instructions in his ear: “Three fingers