Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Cardiology

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Andreas Roland Gruentzig

    Mahesh RajuChicago, Illinois, United States Andreas Roland Gruentzig was born at the start of World War II on June 25, 1939 in Dresden, Germany.1 His mother, Charlotta, raised both him and his older brother after their father had failed to return from the war. His mother, a teacher, had difficulty supporting her family while living…

  • Harold James Charles “Jeremy” Swan: The man behind the “sailing catheter”

    Jimmy PhamMichigan, United States “Pressures in the right side of the heart and pulmonary capillary wedge can be obtained by cardiac catheterization without the aid of fluoroscopy . . . The frequency of premature beats was minimal, and no other arrhythmias occurred.”– N Engl J Med, 19701 With these descriptions, a new balloon-tipped catheter was…

  • John Brereton Barlow: The “mitral valve” cardiologist

    Jimmy PhamMichigan, United States “To all the students who listen, look, touch and reflect: may they hear, see, feel and comprehend”—John Barlow, Perspectives on the Mitral Valve (1986) Mitral valve prolapse is now recognized as one of the most commonly diagnosed cardiac valvular abnormalities, occurring in 2.4% of the general population using standardized echocardiographic criteria,…

  • Raymond de Vieussens

    Jeremy ParkerChicago, Illinois, United States Raymond de Vieussens, the great French physician and pioneer of anatomic work in neurology and cardiology, was born in the village of Vieussens in Rouvergue (c.1635-1641). His father, a lieutenant colonel in the French army, was possibly a bourgeois of Vigan.1,2 Little is known about Vieussens’ upbringing, except that he…

  • Echocardiogram: The first ultrasound picture of the moving heart

    Göran WettrellSweden The developments in ultrasound and microwave technology during World War II stimulated further research in the early 1950s. Ultrasound had been predicted to be useful in visualizing the organs of the human body, and with the beginnings of cardiac surgery there arose a need for better preoperative diagnosis, especially for correcting mitral stenosis…

  • Maude Abbott and the early rise of pediatric cardiology

    Göran WettrellLund University, Sweden In December 1898 Dr. Maude Elizabeth Abbott, assistant curator at the medical museum of McGill University in Canada, was sent to study museums and other institutions in Washington, D.C. In Baltimore she met Dr. William Osler, professor of medicine and one of the founders of the Johns Hopkins Medical School. During…

  • Austin Flint: Eminent American physician

    I need not say that to withhold drugs in the treatment of disease is as important an exercise of professional judgment as to employ them. Nothing is easier that to prescribe drugs. On the other hand, to refrain from their use may require not a little firmness and independence. An ignorant or weak practitioner therefore…

  • Graham Steell of the murmur

    To be remembered for a cardiac murmur is better than not to be remembered at all, at least in the eyes of those seeking immortality for their works on this earth. But as so often happens in such cases, the murmur eponymously linked to the name Graham Steell had been described even earlier by his…