History of cardiovascular pathology

This brief paper is chiefly based on main lectures about a few principal topics presented during the past 75 years at the congresses of the German Society for Circulation Research and its successor, the German Cardiac Society. Rudolf Virchow is often considered as an advocate of an inflammatory theory of atherosclerosis. But his conception of inflammation differed widely from our contemporary definition. Weigert (1880) realized the causal significance of coronary occlusion in the pathogenesis of myocardial infarction. This coronarogenic theory was supported by the very close correspondence between poststenotic supplying areas and the localization and extent of myocardial infarctions (Hort 1979). Sinapius (1965) was one four pathologists who independently recognized that almost all fatal coronary thromboses are due to ruptures of fibrous caps. Aschoff (1934) contributed brilliant papers on the pathogenesis of thromboses. Büchner (1934) observed small foci of necroses in the internal layers of left ventricular wall after attacks of angina pectoris. W. Schaper and his group (1979) gained many new insights into the development of collaterals. Linzbach (1950) established milestones in the quantitative microscopic morphology of the heart describing the myocardial cell-constancy, the critical heart weight and structural dilatation.