It was an English clergyman called Stephen Hales, better known for his pioneering work in botany, who first measured blood pressure by inserting a thin pipe into the artery of a horse in 1733.

The approach was met with uproar from animal lovers, including the well-known poet Alexander Pope.

Various other invasive techniques were developed over the next century before non-invasive methods started to appear, and in 1896, Italian paediatrician Scipione Riva-Rocci developed the forerunner of today’s blood pressure cuff from bicycle inner tubing, copper piping, an inkwell and some mercury.

His sphygmomanometer measured systolic pressure at the brachial artery by observing the cuff pressure at which the radial pulse was no longer palpable.