Teaching cardiology to undergraduate students.

Modern cardiology is based on knowledge derived from several disciplines: Anatomy and embryology, physiology, pathology and bacteriology, pharmacology, physics, roentgenology, physical diagnosis, comparative biology, general medicine and surgery, pediatrics, and therapeutics. Psychiatry in all its aspects, public health, industrial organization, and social service, have multiple problems in common with cardiology. This strict connection between cardiology and allied or parent sciences is demonstrated by a few examples : Conduction disturbances (anatomy) ; complex malformations of the heart (embryology) ; rheumatic fever (bacteriology, immunology, preventive medicine) ; neurocirculatory asthenia (psychiatry). Teaching of cardiology cannot be entirely separated from any of these various contributory disciplines and it could be said that cardiology cuts transversely through all the above mentioned fields.