The Simon Dack lecture. Cardiology: the past, the present, and the future.

Although there is abundant evidence that the critical importance of the heart was appreciated during prehistory as well as in ancient times, its function was first defined by William Harvey, a British physician. The inspiration for his seminal discovery, considered by historians as one of the scientific triumphs of the Renaissance, came from the school of great anatomists of the University of Padua, where Harvey studied medicine and from which he graduated four centuries ago, in 1603. In his earth-shaking publication in 1628, De Motu Cordis, Harvey stated: “It has been shown by reason and experiment that by the beat of the ventricles blood flows through the lungs and it is pumped to the whole body. There it passes through pores in the flesh into the veins through which it returns from the periphery...finally coming to the vena cava and right auricle...It must then be concluded that the blood in the animal body moves around in a circle continuously, and that the action or function of the heart is to accomplish this by pumping. This is the only reason for the motion and beat of the heart” (1). Commencing 275 years after Harvey’s publication, the 20th century witnessed a series of grand achievements in cardiology that have been critical to the development of the specialty. Ten of the most notable are discussed.