As modern science and medicine improved, so has the health maintenance of the human body. People are able to live longer, mainly due to our ability to better take care of our physical parts and even replace them if they fail entirely. The heart, being the main engine, never stops and it never rests.
The never resting engine needs special care and attention for healthy and proper function.
William Harvey was an English physician who was the first to fully describe the circulation system and its relationship to the blood. Harvey was not the first to theorize that the blood circulates throughout the body or that it is pumped by the heart. There were earlier scientists and writers who theorized as such. Harvey was, however, the first to fully organize and describe it as a system of the body in 1628.
The next notable figure, Raymond de Vieussens, was a French anatomist. He was the first to describe the anatomy, or the structure of the heart, its chambers and vessels. In 1705, Vieussens wrote the Vessels of the Human Body, which is a classic study and resource material in the history of cardiology.
In 1733, Stephen Hales, a true scholar in a variety of academic disciplines was an English man of the cloth, who made his contribution to cardiology by being the first to measure blood pressure.
Nearly a century later, in 1816, Rene Theophile-Hyacinth Laennec was able to make the stethoscope, a new invention, while examining chest conditions of his patients in the French Hospital where he worked.
In 1903, the Dutch physiologist, Willem Einthoven invented the first pragmatically usable electrocardiogram, also known as ECG or EKG. Decades later Einthoven received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his contribution to cardiology.
The first major American contribution to cardiology was made by James B. Herrick in 1912. He was the first to describe that hardened arteries can lead to heart disease. Herrick is also credited for describing sickle-cell disease.
A true breakthrough in cardiology was made in 1938 when Robert E. Gross performed the first heart surgery. Gross, an American surgeon was able to save the lives of infants and young children suffering from “blue babies” condition through surgery. Ten years later, Gross performed the first artery graft surgery, thereby making giant leaps in medicine.
In 1951, American surgeon Charles Hufnagel invented the first aplastic, artificial heart valve. This was another true miracle that gave a new lease on life to patients with heart valve failure.
In 1952 at the University of Minnesota, C. Walton Lillehei and Dr. F. John Lewis, both American surgeons, performed the first successful open heart surgery to correct a congenital heart defect.
The following year in 1953, American surgeon John Heysham Gibbon Jr. used a mechanical heart and blood purifier machine to make heart surgery safer and more effective. Unfortunately, and quite ironically, Gibbon died of a heart attack.
In 1957 James Jude, yet another American cardiac surgeon, lead a team to perform the first successful chest compression method. This external cardiac massage method Jude and his team studied and perfected, is the essential component of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, better known as CPR. Today, CPR is widely studied, educated and applied, and saves countless number of lives around the world.
Michael DeBakey, the American surgeon hailed by the National Institute of Health as a “magician of the heart,” performed the first coronary bypass in 1965. In the same year another important American surgeon, Adrian Kantrowitz invented a mechanical implant device to help keep a heart pumping even when the patient is not in the surgical room of a hospital. Their contribution to cardiology continues to save numerous lives today.
Another miraculous breakthrough in cardiology and medicine was made in 1967 by a South African surgeon, Chrstiaan Neethling Barnard. Barnard was able to, for the first time in history, perform a whole human to human heart transplant. This gave new hope to patients with even end stage heart failures or extremely serious coronary artery diseases.
What can be considered a final breakthrough in cardiology began with Robert Jarvik, an American scientist and researcher. His invention of the artificial heart will later make the organic human heart completely replaceable, rendering virtually any heart disease treatable. In 1982, American surgeon Willem DeVries successfully performed the first total artificial heart transplant. DeVries used the Jarvik-7 model, obviously named after its inventor, for this groundbreaking surgery.
Many miraculous strides have been made throughout history by brilliant minds. Without the contributions made by the aforementioned and not mentioned inventors, researchers, scholars and doctors dedicated themselves to study the human heart to the point of creating a new heart that can be replaced if our nature made default one fails. Let us not forget that without their contribution, many of our ancestors and, yes, naturally many of us may not be alive today or even have ever been born. You can read more writings from Joshua Jacobi at http://joshuajacobi.org/
