Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: The first century 1869–1969

Abstract

[first paragraph of article]

Thank you so much, Professor Yacoub. It’s a great honor for me to participate in this conference. I thank you for your vision and your tremendous energy and for everything that you have and are and will accomplish in cardiovascular surgery and science.
I’m going to talk about the first century of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and will emphasize my experience during the last decades of this century.
Few people realize that the first patient with HCM was described in 1869, during the reign of Queen Victoria. The great physician, William Osler, was four years old. Winston Churchill had not yet been born. The electrocardiogram and cardiac catheterization were 35 and 60 years in the future, respectively. But, in the Medical Gazette of Paris, a paper appeared, which was entitled Cardiac Sub-Aortic Stenosis by Henri Liouville [1] and which described a 75-year-old woman who developed worsening dyspnea over several days. On physical examination, she had a systolic heart murmur. She died shortly after presentation.