Abstract
The first drawing of the heart known to mankind was made 50,000 years before Christ in a grotto in Altamira in Spain. The drawing not only pictures the heart roughly as we know it today, but it also was positioned well in the body of the animal. This was no coincidence. The people who made the drawing were hunters, and they had to know where to hit the animal most effectively. The heart was known to be important. The Greeks called it the ‘Acropolis of the body’. Galen, a famous medical researcher and practitioner in Roman times, analysed the function of the heart and the correlation between the various heart compartments. His — partly incorrect — concept of the function of the heart and the peripheral pulse dominated the medical scene for over fifteen centuries. This persisted until 1628 when William Harvey in England wrote his famousDe motu cordis that brought us the modern concepts of circulation and the heart.
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© 1979 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers bv, The Hague
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Thalen, H.J.T. (1979). History of Cardiac Pacing. In: Thalen, H.J.T., Meere, C.C. (eds) Fundamentals of Cardiac Pacing. Developments in Cardiovascular Medicine, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9334-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9334-1_1
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