Forgotten pioneers in thoracic surgery

The names of Carrel, Sauerbruch and Blalock are milestones in the early history of thoracic surgery. The recognition of contributions by less renowned contemporaries does not diminish the decisive part played by these founders of prestigious schools of thoracic surgery. Krönlein who in 1883 successfully performed what was probably the first lobectomy is never mentioned. The esophagectomy without thoracotomy publicized by Orringer in 1978 had already been done by Gray-Turner 47 years before, in 1931. McLean who discovered heparin, and Forssmann who introduced cardiac catheterisation by passing an ureteral catheter into his own heart ended up as small-town general surgeons. Horace Smithy of Charleston successfully performed an operation for mitral stenosis four months before Bailey and Harken. Unlike his famous contemporaries, he was unable to publicize his cases at medical meetings because that same year, 1948, he died from an aortic vascular stenosis. Vineberg, who had recommended and successfully performed internal mammary artery implantation since 1946, was smiled at as a utopian until his rehabilitation by Mason Sones' coronarography and until coronary bypass surgery developed into the greatest boom in thoracic surgery. Sir Henry Souttar, who is known to have operated successfully a mitral stenosis a quarter of a century before Bailey, when asked why following his 1925 success he did not persue mitral surgery answered: "Because I could not get another case!" As usual, surgical "break-throughs" met with the resistance of medical men. Before doctors became enthusiastic advocates and referred thousands of cases of pulmonary tuberculosis, and mitral and coronary stenosis, their opposition had to be overcome by successful operation of generally desperate cases.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)