title: Surgeons, physicians, and cardiology.
abstract: Recognizing that the Renaissance period in Western Europe was the intellectual ferment which triggered an explosive development of knowledge affecting all of the physical sciences. It was judged to be instructive to start from this point and then to advert to some of those persons and institutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who and which in the area of cardiology have contributed to commonality of knowledge among both physicians and surgeons. These particular activities are used as epitomes to illustrate the thesis that, during that period, the previous unnatural breach in the corpus medicum between physicians and surgeons was in the process of being healed, a process which is still active and reaching its full flowering in our own day. It is concluded that medical knowledge and practice constitute a corporate whole and that historical developments in the special branch of cardiology during two recent centuries were a presage of that which is still being worked out in this twentieth century.
mesh_terms: D002309:Cardiology / Q000266:history*; D005060:Europe; D013502:General Surgery / Q000266:history*; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D010820:Physicians / Q000266:history