Highlights in cardiology

Any appraisal of today’s highlights in cardiology must look back on pioneering achievements in the past. The history of this important discipline of internal medicine shows us that the most important steps in its development were temporarily very distant from each other. As early as 1622William Harvey for the first time described the blood circulation; in 1733Steven Hales reported on his experiment of blood pressure measurement, but it was not before 1895 that the pediatricianScipione Riva-Rocci presented his technique for bloodless registration of the systolic and diastolic blood pressure. This method—named after him—was corroborated by the work of the Russian physiologist N. S.Korotkow in 1905. In 1903Willem Einthoven recorded electrical currents in the heart, and 1910 was the year of birth of clinical electrocardiography introduced bySir Thomas Lewis.