History of Cardiology
Date: Friday, April 15 @ 17:42:21 EDT
Topic: Medical History
Before 1900, very few people died of heart disease. Since then, heart disease has become the number one killer in the United States.
The age of technology has made life easier and made people more prone to heart disease. With the arrival of automation, life became less strenuous. Along with the change in lifestyle came a change in diet. The combination of a sedentary lifestyle and a rich diet led to an increase in clogged blood vessels, heart attacks, and strokes.
Heart disease became commonplace. The rate of heart disease increased so sharply between the 1940 and 1967 that the World Health Organization called it the world's most serious epidemic.
Medical science immediately went to work studying the disease and searching out its causes and cures.
Here is a time line of some of the major milestones in Cardiology.
1628 William Harvey, an English Physician, first describes blood circulation.
1706 Raymond de Vieussens, a French anatomy professor, first describes the structure of the heart's chambers and vessels.
1733 Stephen Hales, an English clergyman and scientist, first measures blood pressure.
1816 Rene T. H. Laennec, a French physician, invents the stethoscope.
1903 Willem Einthoven, a Dutch physiologist, develops the electrocardiograph.
1912 James B. Herrick, an American physician, first describes heart disease resulting from hardening of the arteries.
1938 Robert E. Gross, an American surgeon, performs first heart surgery.
1951 Charles Hufnagel, an American surgeon, develops a plastic valve to repair an aortic valve.
1952 F. John Lewis, an American surgeon, performs first successful open heart surgery.
1953 John H. Gibbon, an American surgeon, first uses a mechanical heart and blood purifier.
1961 J. R. Jude, an American cardiologist, leads a team performing the first external cardiac massage to restart a heart.
1965 Michael DeBakey and Adrian Kantrowitz, American surgeons, implant mechanical devices to help a diseased heart.
1967 Christiaan Barnard, a South African surgeon, performs the first whole heart transplant from one person to another.
1982 Willem DeVries, an American surgeon, implants a permanent artificial heart, designed by Robert Jarvik, an American physician, into a patient.
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