The modern<unk>  begins with the understanding of the cardiovascular system based on the work of physician William Harvey (1578–1657), who described the circulation of blood in his book De motu cordis. The English clergyman Stephen Hales made the first published measurement of blood pressure in 1733. Descriptions of what would come to be called<unk>  came from, among others, Thomas Young in 1808 and especially Richard Bright in 1836. Bright noted a link between cardiac hypertrophy and kidney disease, and subsequently kidney disease was often termed Bright's disease in this period. In 1850 George Johnson suggested that the thickened blood vessels seen in the kidney in Bright's disease might be an adaptation to elevated blood pressure. William Senhouse Kirkes in 1855 and Ludwig Traube in 1856 also proposed, based on pathological observations, that elevated pressure could account for the association between left ventricular hypertrophy to kidney damage in Bright's disease. Samuel Wilks observed that left ventricular hypertrophy and diseased arteries were not necessarily associated with diseased kidneys, implying that high blood pressure might occur in people with healthy kidneys; however, the first report of elevated blood pressure in a person without evidence of kidney disease was made by Frederick Akbar Mahomed in 1874 using a sphygmograph. The concept of hypertensive disease as a generalized circulatory disease was taken up by Sir Clifford Allbutt, who termed the condition "hyperpiesia". However,<unk>  as a medical entity really came into being in 1896 with the invention of the cuff-based sphygmomanometer by Scipione Riva-Rocci in 1896, which allowed blood pressure to be measured in the clinic. In 1905, Nikolai Korotkoff improved the technique by describing the Korotkoff sounds that are heard when the artery is ausculted with a stethoscope while the sphygmomanometer cuff is deflated. Tracking serial blood pressure measurements was further enhanced when Donal Nunn invented an accurate fully automated oscillometric sphygmomanometer device in 1981. The term essential<unk>  ('Essentielle Hypertonie') was coined by Eberhard Frank in 1911 to describe elevated blood pressure for which no cause could be found. In 1928, the term malignant<unk>  was coined by physicians from the Mayo Clinic to describe a syndrome of very high blood pressure, severe retinopathy and inadequate kidney function which usually resulted in death within a year from strokes, heart failure or kidney failure. A prominent individual with severe<unk>  was Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, while the menace of severe or malignant<unk>  was well recognised, the risks of more moderate elevations of blood pressure were uncertain and the benefits of treatment doubtful. Consequently,<unk>  was often classified into "malignant" and "benign". In 1931, John Hay, Professor of Medicine at Liverpool University, wrote that "there is some truth in the saying that the greatest danger to a man with a high blood pressure lies in its discovery, because then some fool is certain to try and reduce it". This view was echoed in 1937 by US cardiologist Paul Dudley White, who suggested that<unk>  may be an important compensatory mechanism which should not be tampered with, even if we were certain that we could control it". Charles Friedberg's 1949 classic textbook "Diseases of the Heart", stated that "people with 'mild benign'<unk>  ... defined as blood pressures up to levels of 210/100 mm Hg ... need not be treated". However, the tide of medical opinion was turning: it was increasingly recognised in the 1950s that "benign"<unk>  was not harmless. Over the next decade increasing evidence accumulated from actuarial reports and longitudinal studies, such as the Framingham Heart Study, that "benign"<unk>  increased death and cardiovascular disease, and that these risks increased in a graded manner with increasing blood pressure across the whole spectrum of population blood pressures. Subsequently, the National Institutes of Health also sponsored other population studies, which additionally showed that African Americans had a higher burden of<unk>  and its complications. __TOC__
History of hypertension
History of invasive and interventional cardiology
History of diabetes
History of aspirin
History of continuous noninvasive arterial pressure
History of cardiopulmonary resuscitation
History of general anesthesia
History of herbalism