Category: Cardiology
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The electrocardiographic diagnosis of myocardial ischemia and infarction: 1917–1942
Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Although myocardial infarction and angina pectoris had been recognized as serious heart conditions associated with sudden death since the 19th century (based primarily on patient symptoms of chest pain and pathologic correlations of involvement primarily of the left ventricle), James B. Herrick’s classic 1912 paper on the association of…
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The early history of anticoagulants: 1915–1948
Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Dedicated to the memories of Irving S. Wright and Stephen S. Scheidt, former colleagues at the New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center. Much of the background for this essay was provided by the Mueller-Scheidt Special Report, to which I am grateful.1 Steve Scheidt was a colleague of mine at…
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James Bryan Herrick
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Each year the American Heart Association Council on Clinical Cardiology honors a physician “whose scientific achievements have contributed profoundly to the advancement and practice of clinical cardiology.” This award is named after the physician James B. Herrick (1861–1954) who, within a two-year period, presented descriptions that crystallized the focus on…
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The First Russian Revolution: 1905–1913
Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States Within the years 1905-1913, three figures associated with the Imperial Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg presented papers that provided the stepping-stones for the study of two major conditions leading to cardiovascular disease—hypertension and atherosclerosis. They created the seeds of a revolution that outlasted the more famous revolution of…
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Willem Einthoven and the string galvanometer
Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States “I do not imagine that electrocardiography is likely to find very extensive use in the hospital . . . It can at most be of rare and occasional use to afford a record of some anomaly of cardiac action.”—Augustus D. Waller, 1911 Perhaps the earliest technical device that was…
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William Harvey
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States The impression that William Harvey (1578–1657) discovered the closed circulation of the blood is not entirely accurate, although after Harvey there was never any doubt about it. Regardless of what credit you ascribe to him, it is clear that his research benefited from more than two thousand years of observations…
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René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec and the stethoscope
Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States What constitutes a high-tech instrument? Obviously, in the field of medicine, one that has been developed to improve evaluation of a given condition and lead to a more specific diagnosis. In the early 19th century, there was little that could be considered high-tech in medicine in regard to instrumentation.…
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Coronary heart disease
Matko MarusicCroatiaTranslated by Dalibora Behmen Heart attack One night, Ivo felt a strong pressure in his chest. It was followed by fear and panic. He knew at once what had caused this catastrophe, and spoke of it dispassionately and with the technical precision of an engineer who is sick. The cause was the choke in…
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The history of the stethoscope
MAS AhmedRomford, United KingdomVictoria TurnockLondon, United Kingdom No other symbol is as entwined with the concept of being a doctor as the stethoscope. It is currently one of the most widely used tools that doctors and nurses use for diagnostic purposes. Before its invention auscultation was done by placing the ear and head against the…