More Pioneers in Cardiology

STANFORD T. SHULMAN, MD

aFall 1999

THE FALL 1998 ISSUE of The Child's Doctor contained a stamp column that was devoted completely to cardiology themes, highlighting William Harvey (discoverer of the circulation of the blood), Rene T-H Laënnec (inventor of the stethoscope), and Willem Enthoven (inventor of the EKG). Because this issue of The Child's Doctor is totally cardiac in nature, this issue's stamp column is also focussed on cardiac stamps.

Andreas Vesalius of Brussels (1514–1564) was the most commanding figure in European medicine between Galen in the second century and William Harvey in the seventeenth. Vesalius pioneered the concept of structural anatomy in his "De humani corporis fabrica" ("The Fabric of the Human Body") in 1543. Among his numerous anatomic observations was his description of the ventricular septum and its impermeability, thus leading him to reject earlier thoughts that blood from the two ventricles normally mixed.

He also provided very detailed descriptions of the anatomy of the heart, veins and arteries. He is depicted on the black and white stamp from Hungary (Magyar) and the more colorful stamp from Transkei.

Karl F. von Rokitansky (1804–1878) of Vienna was considered the greatest anatomist of his time, having personally performed more than 30,000 autopsies. He is shown on the dark purple Austrian stamp. He was the first to detect bacteria in the lesions of infective endocarditis, published a great monograph on diseases of the arteries, and described septal defects and other congenital cardiac anomalies.

Joseph Skoda (1805–1881) was a Viennese colleague of von Rokitansky and is shown on the green Austrian stamp. He perfected percussion and auscultation ("Skodiac resonance") and described the clinical findings of peri-cardial effusion. It is said that he cared much for diagnosis but little for treatment.

Cardiac transplantation is honored by the three stamps from South Africa and the pink one from Dominica. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human cardiac transplant on December 3, 1967, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, RSA. Barnard was born in 1922 of poor Afrikaaner parents, received his MD from the Univer-sity of Cape Town and a PhD from the University of Minnesota. Although the first transplant recipient survived only 18 days, a second recipient transplanted one month later survived much longer.

The red, white and blue Danish stamp portrays the embryologic anatomic arches that give rise to the major portions of the cardiovascular system.

The red Austrian stamp shows a fanciful EKG tracing, while the red and gray Belgian stamp and the red and green Cuban stamp show junctional and ventricular electrocardiographic tracings.

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