History in medicine: the aortic valve

This paper on the aortic valve covers five centuries. From Galenus to the first accurate drawing by da Vinci in 1515, it moves on to Harvey who described the cardiac circulation in 1628. This pivotal work was the start of new developments and inventions (stethoscope by Laennec, 1816) that progressively enabled diagnosis and treatment of aortic valve disorders. From first descriptions of aortic stenosis (Riviere, 1663) and regurgitation (Cowper, 1706), via the first clinical diagnostic procedures (Forssmann, catheterisation, 1929; Edler and Hertz, ultrasound cardiography, 1953), the story ends with ground-breaking therapeutic interventions (Hufnagel, prosthesis, 1952, and Cribier, transcatheter aortic valve implantation, 2002).