Pioneers in cardiology

STANFORD T. SHULMAN, MD

Fall 1998

THE 1972 STAMP from Cyprus (below) portrays the gross cardiac anatomy with an electrocardiographic tracing.

Rene-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laënnec (1781–1826) was born in Quimper in Brittany (France) and has become known (among his other contributions) as the inventor of the stethoscope in 1816. This was described in his 1819 Traité de auscultation médiate. He studied both chest and cardiac auscultation and described a number of pathologic conditions of lungs (e.g., bronchiectasis, emphysema) and liver (cirrhosis). Shortly before his death from tuberculosis at 45, Laënnec described the auscultatory findings of mitral valve stenosis (ossification). He is portrayed on the green French stamp.

William Harvey (1578–1657), born in Folkestone in Kent (Britain), is considered the greatest name in 17th century medicine. Most historians agree that his great work, De Motu Cordis, established that blood circulates throughout the body propelled by the heart as a muscular pump and that blood flow is continuous and circular, returning to the heart. He proved this experimentally using vivisection as well as ligation and perfusion experiments. Harvey's discovery of the circulation was considered the most important event in medical history since those in Galen's era 1500 years earlier. Harvey was honored in 1987 by the tan and black stamp from Hungary.

Willem Einthoven (1860–1927) of Leyden is honored on the purple stamp from his native Netherlands. In 1903 Einthoven developed a string galvanometer that was sufficiently sensitive to detect and record the weak electrical currents generated by the heart. He later devoted much effort to interpreting the recorded patterns from his electrocardiograms and received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1924.

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