History of precordial leads in electrocardiography

Precordial leads were first used by Waller, whose capillary electroscope was too insensitive to detect the electric forces emanating from the human heart unless the electrode was placed over the precordium as near to the heart as possible. When Einthoven developed the elegant, reliable and sensitive string galvanometer, he could record the electric forces of the heart from the hands and feet of the subject without even undressing him. When Einthoven's great galvanometer became available, only the three standard limb leads were used. Thomas Lewis and others experimented with precordial direct leads and made many important discoveries in electrocardiography and cardiology. Wolferth and Wood, in 1932, introduced the first precordial lead in clinical, diagnostic cardiology. The recordings were 'upside-down', i.e. positive deflections were down and negative ones up. They called this the 4th lead (lead IV). The precordial electrode was placed on the chest over the apex of the heart, regardless of where the apex was located. This immediately opened new avenues of study in infarction, ventricular hypertrophy, bundle branch block, and all other cardiac states. Then CL, CR, CF, CB and V leads were introduced. The points considered best for placing the 'exploring' or precordial electrode became an issue, and much confusion prevailed until Wilson and his associates developed the central or isopotential terminal and until the American Heart Association and the Heart Society of Britain and Ireland met in London and published the standards for recording precordial leads in 1938. There followed, for obvious reasons, a slow settling of the confusion until the V1 through V6 precordial leads became standard procedure all over the world, as exists today. Goldberger introduced the augmented unipolar limb leads (aVR, aVL and aVF) which have resulted in the standard 12-lead electrocardiogram of routine use today. No one would consider an electrocardiographic evaluation adequate in a cardiac study at present unless the 12-lead ECG were recorded.