Suturing of Penetrating Wounds to the Heart in the Nineteenth Century: The Beginnings of Heart Surgery

The beginnings of cardiac surgery go back to the 19th century. This article describes the history of the first attempts to operate on the heart. In 1882, Dr Block from Danzig, and in 1895, Simplicio Del Vecchio, published reports of animal experiments showing that the suturing of heart wounds is possible. After unsuccessful attempts by Axel Cappelen in Norway and Guido Farina in Italy, it was Ludwig Rehn of Germany who first sutured a laceration of the right ventricle of a human heart. Shortly afterward, Antonio Parrozzani successfully sutured a stab wound of the left ventricle. Following cardiac surgery back to its very beginnings, it is striking that the first attempts in the 19th century to repair the injured heart were regarded with great skepticism, and that heart suturing only slowly became an established method of treatment. Once the concept of cardiac surgery had become accepted, however, many kinds of operations were developed, paving the way for an explosion in the number of cardiac operations, as we well know, in the century that followed.