The early days of heart valve surgery

To the lay public, the very idea of an operation on that vital structure, the heart, seems to be out of the question. (In fact, the heart muscle is an incredibly tough machine that can go on pumping, without a single service, for 90 or more years!) Even to the surgeons of the end of the 19th century, who, thanks to the twin discoveries of anaesthesia and antiseptic surgery, were beginning to operate on all the other major organs of the body, heart surgery seemed to remain an impossible dream. Even that great pioneer of modern scientific surgery, Theodor Billroth, Professor of Surgery in Vienna, who had himself already performed the first successful partial gastrectomy for a stomach cancer and the first laryngectomy, wrote, in 1893, 'Any surgeon who would attempt an operation on the heart should lose the respect of his colleagues'.